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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



MAYNARD'S ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES.— No. 195-196 



THE PRINCESS 



ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 



WITH INTBOBUGTOBY AND EXPLANATORY 
NOTES 




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INTKODUCTION 

Alfred Tennyson was born August 5, 1809, at Somersby, a 
hamlet in Lincolnshire, England, of which, and of a neighboring 
parish, his father, Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, was rector. The 
poet's mother was Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche, 
vicar of Louth. Alfred was the third of seven sons — Frederick, 
Charles, Alfred, Edward, Horatio, Arthur, and Septimus. A 
daughter, Cecilia, became the wife of Edmund Law Lushington, 
long professor of Greek in Glasgow University. Whether there 
were other daughters, the biographies of the poet do not mention. 

Tennyson's career as a poet dates back as far as 1827, in which 
year, he being then but eighteen years of age, he published anon- 
ymously, in connection with his brother Charles (who was only 
thirteen months his senior, having been born July 4, 1808), a 
small volume, entitled '' Poems by Two Brothers." The Preface, 
which is dated March, 1827, states that the poems contained in 
the volume ** were written from the ages of fifteen to eighteen, 
not conjointly but individually; which may account for the differ- 
ence of style and matter " 

In 1828, or early in 1829, these two brothers entered Trinity 
Co, lege, Cambridge, where their eldest brother, Frederick, had 
already entered. At the Cambridge Commencement in 1829, Al- 
fred took the Chancellor's gold medal, by his poem entitled " Tim- 
buctoo." That ai)pears to have been the first year of his acquaint- 
ance, which soon ripened into an ardent friendship, with Arthur 
Henry Hallam, this friendship, as we learn from the xxii. section 
of "In Memoriam," having been, at Hallam's death, of "four 
sweet years' " duration. It is an interesting fact that Hallam was 
one of Tennyson's rival competitors for the Chancellor's prize. 
His poem is dated June, 1829. It is contained in his "Literary 
Remains." Among other of Tennyson's friends at the University 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION 

were John Mitchell Kemble, the Anglo-Saxon scholar ; William 
Henry Brookfield, long an eloquent preacher in London ; James 
Spedding, the biographer and editor of Lord Bacon ; Henry Alford, 
Dean of Canterbury ; Richard Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord 
Houghton), who united the poet and the politician, and was the 
biographer of Keats ; and Richard Chenevix Trench, who became 
Dean of Westminster in 1856, and Archbishop of Dublin in 1864. 
A brilliant array of college friends ! 

Tennyson's prize poem was published shortly after the Cam- 
bridge Commencement of 1829, and was very favorably noticed 
in The Athenceum of July 22, 1829. In it can already be recognized 
much of the real Tennyson. There are, indeed, but very few 
poets whose earliest productions exhibit so much of their after- 
selves. The real Byron, the most vigorous in his diction of all 
modern poets, hardly appears at all in his Hours of Idleness, 
which was published when he was about the age that Tennyson 
was when Timhuctoo was published. 

In 1830 appeared Poems, cJiiefly Lyrical, 'by Alfred Tennyson. 
In this volume appeared, among others, the poems entitled Ode 
to Memory, The Poet, The PoeVs Mind, The Deserted House, and 
The Sleeping Beauty, which were full of promise, and struck key- 
notes of future works. The reviews of the volume mingled praise 
and blame — the blame perhaps being predominant. In 1832 ap- 
peared Poems hy Alfred Tennyson, among which were included 
The Lady of Shalott, The Miller's Baxighter, The Palace of Art, 
The Lotos Eaters, and A Bream of Fair Women, all showing a 
great advance in workmanship and a more distinctly articulate 
utterance — many of the poems of the previous volumes being 
rather artist-studies in vowel and melody suggestiveness. It was 
reviewed, somewhat facetiously, in The (Quarterly, July, 1833, 
(vol. 49, pp. 81-96) by, as was generally understood, John Gibson 
Lockhart, the son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott, at that time editor 
of The Quarterly ; and in a more earnest and generous vein, by 
John Stuart Mill, in The Westminster, July, 1835. 

A silence of ten years succeeded the 1832 volume, broken only 
by an occasional contribution of a short poem to some magazine 
or collection. In 1842 appeared Poems by Alfred Tennyson, in 
two volumes, containing selections from the volumes of 1830 and 
1832, and many new poems, among which were JJlysses^ Lorn and 



INTRODUCTION" O 

Duty , The Talking Oak, Godiva, and the remarkable poems of 
The Two Voices and The Vision of Sin. The volumes were most 
enthusiastically received, and Tennyson took at once his place as 
England's great poet. A second edition followed in 1843, a third 
in 1845, a fourth in 1846, and a fifth in 1848. Then came The 
Princess : A Medley, 1847; a second edition, 1848; In Memonam, 
1850, three editions appearing in the same year. 

The poet was married June 13, 1850, to Emily, daughter of 
Henry Sell wood, Esq., and niece of Sir John Franklin, of Arctic 
Expedition fame. Wordsworth had died April 23 of that year, 
and the laureateship was vacant. After some opposition, the 
chief coming from The AthencBum, which advocated the claims of 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tennyson received the appointment, 
his In Memoriam, which had appeared a short time before, and 
which at once laid hold of so many hearts, contributing much, no 
doubt, to the final decision. His presentation to the queen took 
place at Buckingham Palace, March 6, 1851, and in the same 
month appeared the seventh edition of the Poems, with an intro- 
ductory poem To the Queen, in which he pays a high tribute to 
his predecessor in the laureateship : 

" Victoria, since your royal grace 
To one of less desert allows 
This laurel greener from the brows 
Of him that uttered nothing base." 

To do much more than note the titles of his principal works 
since he became Poet-Laureate, the prescribed limit of this 
sketch will not allow. In 1855 appeared Maud, which, though 
it met with great disapprobation and but stinted praise, is, per- 
haps, one of his greatest poems. In July, 1859, the first of the 
Idyls of the King appeared, namely, Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and 
Guinevere, which were at once great favorites with all readers of 
the poet ; in August, 1864, Enoch Arden, with which were pub- 
lished Aylmer's Field, Sea Dreams, The Grandmother, and TJie 
Northern Farmer; in December, 1869, four additional Idyls, 
under the title The Holy Grail and Other Poems, namely. The 
Coming of Arthur, The Holy Grail, Pelleas and Ettare, and 
The Passing of Arthur, of which forty thousand copies were 
ordered in advance ; in December, 1871, in The Contemporary 
Review, The Last Tournament ; in 1872, Gareth and Lynette ; in 



b INTRODUCTION 

1875, Queen Mary : A Drama ; in 1877, Harold : A Drama; in 
1880, Ballads and Other Poems. 

Tennyson's Muse lias been productive of a body of lyric, idyllic, 
metaphysical, and narrative or descriptive poetry, the choicest, 
rarest, daintiest, and of the most exquisite workmanship of any 
that the century has to show. In a strictly dramatic direction he 
can hardly be said to have been successful. His Queen Mary is 
but little short of a failure as a drama, and his Harold, but a 
partial success. Witii action proper he has shown but little 
sympathy, and in the domain of vicarious thinking and feeling, 
in which Robert Browning is so pre-eminent, but little ability. 
But no one who is well acquainted with all the best poetry of the 
nineteenth century will hesitate to pronounce him. facile princeps 
in the domain of the lyric and idyllic ; and in these departments 
of poetry he has developed a style at once individual and, in an 
artistic point of view, almost *' faultily faultless" — a style which 
may be traced from his earliest efforts up to the most complete 
perfection of his latest poetical works. 

The splendid poetry he has given to the world has been the 
product of the most patient elaboration. No English poet, with 
the exception of Milton, Wordsworth, and the Brownings, ever 
worked with a deeper sense of the divine mission of poetry than 
Tennyson has worked. And he has worked faithfully, earnestly, 
and conscientiously to realize the ideal with which he appears to 
have been early possessed. To this idea he gave expression in 
two of his early poems, entitled The Poet and The Poefs Mind ; 
and in another of his early poems. The Lady of Shalott, is mys- 
tically shadowed forth the relations which poetic genius should 
sustain to the world for whose spiritual redemption it labors, and 
the fatal consequences of its being seduced by the world's tempta- 
tions — the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the 
pride of life. 

Great thinkers and writers owe their power among men, not 
necessarily so much to a wide range of ideas, or to the originality 
of their ideas, as to the intense vitality which they are able to 
impart to some one comprehensive, fructifying idea, with which, 
through constitution and the circumstances of their times, they 
have become possessed. It is only when a man is really pos- 
sessed with an idea (that is, if it does not run away with him) 



I 



INTRODUCTION" 7 

that he can express it with a quickening power, and ring all 
possible changes upon it. 

What may be said to be the dominant idea, and the most 
vitalized, in the poetry of Alfred Tennyson? It is easily noted. 
It glints forth everywhere in his poetry. It is, that the complete 
man must be a well-poised duality of the active and the passive 
or receptive; must unite with an *' all-subtilizing intellect," an 
** all-comprehensive tenderness " ; must '* gain in sweetness and 
in moral height, noi^ lose the wrestling thews that throw the 
world." 

[Thus far Dr. Corson, of Cornell University, in his Introduc- 
tion to The Ttco Voices and A Dream of Fair Women, poems 
edited by him for Maynard's English Classic Series.^ 



THE PEINCESS 

The Princess was first printed in 1847, and the fifth and defini 
live edition was published in 1853. At the time of its first publi- 
cation, the roovement in favor of woman's rights was in great 
danger, because of the absurd length to which it had been carried 
by ill-advised and short-sighted reformers, of defeating its own 
ends. The general public did not, as a rule, see the importance 
and significance of the agitation underlying the absurdities and 
violence which had become incorporated with the movement. 
" If women ever play such freaks," wrote Tennyson to Mr. Daw- 
son in a letter expressing the poet's appreciation of the latter's 
*' Study of ' The Princess,' " **the burlesque and the tragic might 
go hand in hand, " and this remark is significant of the poet's method 
in the attempt to point out the true life of woman. The poem is, 
as its sub-title implies, miscellaneous in subject-matter and in 
treatment. If, as Dr. Van Dyke thinks, this is its most serious 
defect, yet it is a defect that is all but inevitable; for the subject 
of woman's rights could not, at that time, be discussed in all 
seriousness and gain the hearing which it must gain to accom- 
plish its end; for the poem is essentially didactic. That Tennyson 
recognized the dangers of the mock-heroic style is evident from 
passages in the Prologue and Conclusion which are more definitely 
pointed out in the notes. 

Professor Wallace has instanced a passage from Comte's Sys- 
tem of Positive Polity as an admirable summary of the teaching 
of the poem: 

*' Viewed thus, marriage is the most elementary, and yet the 
most perfect, mode of social life. It is the only association in 
which entire identity of interests is possijple. In this union, to 
the moral completeness of which the language of all civilized 
nations bears testimony, the noblest aim of human life is realized, 
as far as it ever can be. For the object of human existence, as 
shown in the second chapter, is progress of every kind; progress 
in morality, that is to say, in the subjection of self-interest to 
social feeling, holding the first rank. Now this unquestionable 
principle, which has been already indicated in the second chapter, 

8 



^ 



THE PRINCESS 9 

leads us by a very sure and direct path to the true theory of mar- 
riage. 

** Different as the two sexes are by nature, and increased as that 
difference is by the diversity which happily exists in their social 
position, each is consequently necessary to the moral develop- 
ment of the other. In practical energy and in the mental capacity 
connected with it, man is evidently superior to woman. Woman^s 
strength, on the other hand, lies in feeling. She excels man in 
love, as man excels her in all kinds of force. It is impossible to 
conceive of a closer union than that which binds these two beings 
to the mutual service and perfection of each other, saving them 
from all danger of rivalry. The voluntary character, too, of this 
union gives it a still further charm when the choice has been on 
both sides a happy one. In the Positive theory, then, of marriage, 
its principal object is considered to be that of completing and con- 
firming the education of the heart by calling out the purest and 
strongest of human sympathies," 

The Princess, more than any other of Tennyson's longer poems 
with the possible exception of In Memoriam, is dependent on 
explanatory notes for its proper appreciation and enjoyment, and 
especially is this true in the case of children ; the themes which 
are its subject are beyond their experience and, to a large degree, 
their interest, its structure is intricate and unusual, and its beauty 
as poetry lies largely, as it were, under the surface; but its value 
as a field for study rather lies in these characteristics than exists 
in spite of them. 

The notes of the present edition have been rigidly subjected to 
the test of the question, " Is the pupil likely to find this out for 
himself ? " and it is believed that they contain nothing which will 
not be a distinct help in the understanding and enjoyment of the 
poem. On the other hand, more has been sought for than the 
mere ability to pass an examination on the subject-matter of the 
poem, and an attempt has been made to help the student to an 
appreciation of the more distinctively artistic features of Tenny- 
son's work as such. 

In preparing the present edition constant use has been made of 
the notes to the edition of Professor Wallace of the Anglo-Indian 
College, Aligarh (Macmillan). 

August 16, 1897 



CEITICAL OPINIONS 

** The Princess, as we now possess it, is the outcome of careful 
and sustained effort on the poet's part, the offspring of his mature 
powers, polished and refined through several editions, and may 
thus be fairly regarded as a work upon which its author has 
bestowed the utmost of his critical after-thought as well as creative 
power. And when we consider with what marked success Ten- 
nyson has throughout his career maintained the high standard of 
excellence that he early trained us to expect from his pen, whether 
we look for healthiness and sobriety of thought, artistic treatment 
of materials, or splendor and grace of language, this poem will 
appear worthy in an especial degree of our earnest and reverent 
study, with respect both to his handling of the various problems 
and points at issue in the main theme of the story, and to the 
manner and form of their presentation." — P. M. Wallace. 

** To describe his command of language by any ordinary terms 
expressive of fluency or force would be to convey an idea both 
inadequate and erroneous. It is not only that he knows every 
word in the language suited to express his every idea ; he can 
select with the ease of magic the word that above all others is best 
for his purpose; nor is it that he can at once summon to his aid 
the best word the language affords ; with an art which Shake- 
speare never scrupled to apply, though in our day it is apt to be 
counted mere Germanism, and pronounced contrary to the genius 
of the language, he combines old words into new epithets, he 
daringly mingles all colors to bring out tints that never were on 
sea or shore. His words gleam like pearls and opals, like rubies 
and emeralds. He yokes the stern vocables of the English tongue 
to the chariot of his imagination, and they become gracefully 
brilliant as the leopards of Bacchus, soft and glowing as the 
Cytherean doves. He must have been born with an ear for verbal 

10 



CRITICAL OPINIONS 11 

sounds, an instinctive appreciation of the beautiful and delicate 
in words, hardly ever equaled. Though his later vrorks speak 
less of the blossom-time — show less of the efflorescence and irides- 
cence and mere glance and gleam of colored words — -they display 
no falling off, but rather an advance, in the mightier elements of 
rhythmic speech." — Peter Bayne. 

' * Not often has a lovelier story been recited. After the idyllic 
introduction, the body of the poem is composed in a semi-heroic 
verse. Other works of our poet are greater, but none is so fasci- 
nating as this romantic tale : English throughout, yet combining 
the England of Cceur de Leon with that of Victoria in one be- 
witching picture. Some of the author's most delicately musical 
lines — ' jewels five words long ' — are herein contained, and the 
ending of each canto is an effective piece of art. . . . 

" Few will deny that, taken together, these [songs] constitute 
the finest group of songs produced in our century ; and the third, 
known as the * Bugle Song,' seems to many the most perfect 
English lyric since the time of Shakespeare. In The Princess 
we also find Tennyson's most successful studies upon the model 
of the Theocritan isometric verse. He was the first to enrich our 
poetry with this class of melodies, for the burlesque pastorals of 
the eighteenth century need not be considered. Not one of the 
blank-verse songs in his Arthurian epic equals in structure or 
feeling the * Tears, idle tears,* and * O swallow, swallow, flying, 
flying south.' " — Victorian Poets : E. C. Stedman. 

•' One hardly knows how to take the poet. At one moment he 
is very much in earnest ; the next moment he seems to be making 
fun of the woman's college. The style is like a breeze that blows 
northwest by southeast ; it may be a very lively breeze, and full 
,of sweet odors from every quarter; but the trouble is that we 
cannot tell which way to trim our sails to catch the force of it, and 
so our craft goes jibing to and fro, without making progress in any 
direction. 

** I think we feel this uncertainty most of all in the characters 
of the Princess and the Prince, — and I name the Princess first 
because she is evidently the hero of the poem. Sometimes she 
appears to be very admirable and lovable, in a stately kind of 
beauty ; but again she seems like a woman from whom a man 
with ordinary prudence and a proper regard for his own sense of 



12 CRITICAL OPINIONS 

humor would promptly and carefully flee away, appreciating tlie 
truth of the description which her father, King Gama, gives of 
her : 

" ' Awful odes she wrote, 

Too awful sure for what they treated of, 

But all she says and does is awful.' 

* ' There is a touch of her own style, it seems to me, here and 
there in the poem. The epithets are somewhat too numerous and 
too stately. The art is decidedly arabesque; there is a surplus of 
ornament ; and here, more than anywhere else, one finds it diflB.- 
cult to defend Tennyson from the charge of over-elaboration." 
— The Poetry of Tennyson : Henry van Dyke. 

*' The poem of The Princess, as a work of art, is the most com- 
plete and satisfying of all Tennyson's works. It possesses a play 
of fancy, of humor, of pathos, and of passion which give it vari- 
ety ; while the feeling of unity is unbroken throughout. It is full 
of passages of the rarest beauty and most exquisite workman- 
ship. The songs it contains are unsurpassed in English literature. 
The diction is drawn from the treasure-house of old English poe- 
try — from Chaucer, from Shakespeare, and the poets of the Eliza- 
bethan age. The versification is remarkable for its variety; while 
the rhythm, in stateliness and expression, is modelled upon Milton. 
There are passages which, in power over language to match 
sound with sense, are not excelled by anything in Paradise 
Lost for strength, or in Milton's minor poems for sweetness. 

—Study of the Princess : S. E. Dawson. 



- / 




THE PRINCESS 

A MEDLEY 



PROLOGUE 



Sir Walter Vivian all a summer^s day- 
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun 
Up to the people : thither flocked at noon 
His tenants^ wife and child^ and thither half 
The neighboring borough with their Institute 5 

Of which he was the patron. I was there 
From college^ visiting the son^ — the son 
A Walter too^ — with others of our set, 
Five others : we were seven at Vivian-place. 

And me that morning Walter show'd the house, 10 
Greek, set with busts : from vases in the hall 



The purpose of the prologue is to provide a settine: for the tale and to 
give it an atmosphere. The description of the fete with the implied 
changing: conditions and methods in education serves as a prelude to 
the central thought of the poem proper. With this is contrasted the 
quiet group of story-tellers. 

2. lawns, broad meadows. 

5. Institute, an educational and social institution established in the 
interests of the working classes. 

11. Greek, of Grecian architecture. 

18 



14 THE PRINCESS 

Flowers of all heavens^ and lovelier than their names^ 

Grew side by side ; and on the pavement lay 

Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park. 

Huge Ammonites^ and the first bones of Time ; 15 

And on the tables every clime and age 

Jumbled together ; celts and calumets^ 

Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava^, fans 

Of sandal;, amber^ ancient rosaries. 

Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere, 20 

The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs 

From the isles of palm : and higher on the walls. 

Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer. 

His own forefathers' arms and armor hung. 

And ^^ this/' he said, " was Hugh's at Agincourt ; 25 

And that was old Sir Ealph's at Ascalon : 

A good knight he ! we keep a chronicle 

With all about him " — which he brought, and I 

Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights. 

Half -legend, half -historic, counts and kings 30 

Who laid about them at their wills and died ; 

And mixed with these, a lady, one that arm'd 



12 names, even more beautiful than their beautiful names; not a 
contrast between beauty and harshness. 

15 Ammonites, fossil shells of cuttle-fishes, once thought to be petri- 
fied snakes. 

first bones, fossils of prehistoric animals. 

17. celts, the stone weapons of the ancient Danes, 
calumets, Indian tobacco-pipes ; ''the pipe of peace." 

18. claymore, the two-handed sword of the Scottish Highlanders. 
19 sandal, sandalwood. 

20. laborious ivories, carved ivory balls, one within another ; bric-a- 
brac. 

21. cursed crease, a double-edged sword with a serpentine blade; 
" cursed '' for the terrible wound that it inflicts. 

22. isles of palm, the South Sea Islands. 

25. Agincourt, a famous battle (1415*, in which Henry V. defeated the 
French. 

26. Ascalon, in Palestine, where in 1792 Richard I defeated the Sara- 
cens under Saladin In oneof the greatest battles of the crusades. 



THE PRINCESS 15 

Her own fair head, and sallying thro' the gate, 
Had beat her foes with slaughter from the walls. 

'' miracle of women/^ said the book, 35 

" noble heart who, being strait-besieged 

By this w41d king to force her to his wish, 

Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier's death. 

But now when all was lost or seem'd as lost — 

Her stature more than mortal in the burst 40 

Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire — 

Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate. 

And, falling on them like a thunderbolt. 

She trampled some beneath her horses' heels. 

And some were whelm'd with missiles of the Avail, 45 

And some were push'd with lances from the rock. 

And part were drown'd within the whirling brook : 

miracle of noble womanhood ! '' 

So sang the gallant glorious chronicle ; 
And, I all rapt in this, '' Come out," he said, 50 

" To the Abbey : there is Aunt Elizabeth 
And sister Lilia with the rest." We went 
(1 kept the book and had my finger in it) 
©own thro' the park : strange was the sight to me ; 
For all the sloping pasture murmur'd sown 55 

With happy faces and with holiday. 
There moved the multitude, a thousand heads : 



36 strait, hard and close ; cf. "in sore straits.'' 

65. murmured, resounded with voices. 

56. with happy faces and with holiday, a classical figure of speech 
called Hendiadys, meaning one thought in two expressions. The 
thought here is *' with the happy faces of those who were enjoying the 
holiday." 



16 THE PRINCESS 

The patient leaders of their Institute 

Taught them with facts. One rear'd a font of stone 

And drew^ from butts of water on the slope^, 60 

The fountain of the moment, playing, now 

A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls, 

Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball 

Danced like a wisp : and somewhat lower down 

A man with knobs and wires and vials fired 65 

A cannon : Echo answer'd in her sleep 

From hollow fields : and here were telescopes 

For azure views ; and there a group of girls 

In circle waited, whom the electric shock 

Dislink'd with shrieks and laughter : round the lake 

A little clockwork steamer paddling plied 71 

And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls 

A dozen angry models jetted steam : 

A petty railway ran : a fire-balloon 

Eose gem-like up before the dusky groves 75 

And dropt a fairy parachute and past : 

And there thro^ twenty posts of telegraph 

They flash'd a saucy message to and fro 

Between the mimic stations ; so that sport 

Went hand in hand with Science ; otherwhere 80 

Pure sport : a herd of boys with clamor bowl'd 

And stump'd the wicket ; babies roll'd about 

Like tumbled fruit in grass ; and men and maids 

Arranged a country dance, and flew thro^ light 

66. Echo, personified ; the Grecian Nymph. 

73. an^ry, acting in a way which in man would denote anger ; the 
"pathetic faUacy," i.e., the attribution to inanimate objects of the fac- 
ulties which properly belong to man. 

81. pure, without any attempt at instruction. 

83. stumped the wicket, a term in the English game of cricket. 



THE PRINCESS 17 

And shadow^ while the twangling violin 85 

Struck up with Soldier-laddie^ and overhead 

The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime 

Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end. 

Strange was the sight and smacking of the time ; 
And long we gazed^ but satiated at length 90 

Came to the ruins. High-arched and ivy-claspt. 
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire, 
Thro^ one wide chasm of time and. frost they gave 
The park, the crowd, the house ; but all within 
The sward was trim as any garden lawn : 95 

And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth, 
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends 
Prom neighbor seats : and there was Ealph himself, 
A broken statue propt against the wall. 
As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport, 100 

Half child, half woman as she was, had wound 
A scarf of orange round the stony helm. 
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk. 
That made the old warrior from his ivied nook 
Glow like a sunbeam : near his tomb a feast 105 

Shone, silver-set ; about it lay the guests. 



86. Soldier-laddie, the name of a favorite tune for dancing. 

87-8"^. Notice the onomatopoeia, i.e., the correspondence between the 
sound of the words and the sound of that which they describe. 

89. smacking of the time, characteristic of the age, indicative of an 
awakening interest in science. 

92. Gothic architecture, which reached its greatest popularity in Eng- 
land during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, is graceful and 
delicate as contrasted with Norman or classic architecture. 

93. thro' . . . frost, a chasm in the walls due to age and the action of 
the elements. 

93. gave, allowed a view of. 

98. neighbor seats, adjacent 5ountry-seats. 

106. silver-set, set with silver plate. 



18 THE PRINCESS 

And there we join'd them : then the maiden Aunt 

Took this fair day for text;, and from it preached 

An "universal culture for the crowd. 

And all things great ; but we, unworthier, told 110 

Of college : he had climb'd across the spikes. 

And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars. 

And he had breathed the Proctor^s dogs ; and one 

Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men, 

But honeying at the whisper of a lord ; 115 

And one the Master, as a rogue in grain 

Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory. 

But while they talk'd above their heads I saw 
The feudal warrior lady-clad ; which brought 
My book to mind : and opening this I read 120 

Of old Sir Ealph a page or two that rang 
With tilt and tourney ; then the tale of her 
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls. 
And much I praised her nobleness, and '' Where,^^ 
Ask'd Walter, patting Lilia's head (she lay 125 

Beside him) " lives there such a woman now ? ^^ 

Quick answer'd Lilia: ^^ There are thousands now 
Such women, but convention beats them down : 
It is but bringing up ; no more than that : 

108. this fair day, this fete of the working-people. 

110. all things great, elevated topics. 

111. spikes, on the wall of the college gardens. 

112. bars, on the window of a college room. 

113. breathed, tired out with running. 

Proctor, a university officer, whose duty it is to superintend' the 
discipline of the students and to maintain good order, 
dogs, college slang for proctor's assistants. 

115. honeying, Becoming affable. 

116. Master, the head of a Cambridge college. 
128. convention, custom. 



THE PRINCESS 19 

You men have done it : how I hate you all ! 130 

Ah, were I something great ! I wish I were 
Some mighty poetess^, I would shame you then. 
That love to keep us children ! I wish 
That I were some great princess, I would build 
Far off from men a college like a man's, 135 

And I would teach them all that men are taught ; 
We are twice as quick ! '' And here she shook aside 
The hand that play'd the patron with her curls. 

And one said smiling : '' Pretty were the sight 
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt 140 
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans. 
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair. 
I think they should not wear our rusty gowns. 
But move as rich as Emperor-moths or Ralph 
Who shines so in the corner ; yet I fear, 145 

If there were many Lilias in the brood. 
However deep you might embower the nest. 
Some boy would spy it.^' 

At this upon the sward 
She tapt her tiny silken-sandard foot : 
" That's your light way ; but I would make it death 150 
For any male thing but to peep at us." 

Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd ; 
A rosebud set with little willful thorns. 



138. played the patron, rested patronizingly on her hair. 

140. halls, college buildings. 

141. dowager, the widow of a nobleman. 

dean, the chief disciplinary officer of a college. Notice the 
alliteration in 141-142. 
144. Empcror-moths, moths of magnificent coloring. 



20 THE PRINCESS 

And sweet as English air could make her, she : 

But Walter hail'd a score of names upon her, 155 

And '' petty Ogress/' and " ungrateful Puss/' 

And swore he long'd at college, only long'd. 

All else was well, for she-society. 

They boated and they cricketed ; they talk'd 

At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics ; 160 

They lost their weeks ; they vext the souls of deans ; 

They rode ; they betted ; made a hundred friends. 

And caught the blossoms of the flying terms. 

But missed the mignonette of Vivian-place, 

The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke, 165 

Part banter, part affection. 

'' True,'' she said, 
'' We doubt not that. yes, you miss'd us much. 
FU stake my ruby ring upon it you did." 

She held it out ; and as a parrot turns 
Up thro' gilt wires a crafty loving eye, 170 

And takes a lady's finger with all care. 
And bites it for true heart and not for harm. 
So he with Lilia's. Daintily she shriek'd 
And wrung it. " Doubt my word again ! " he said. 
" Come, listen ! here is proof that you were miss'd : 

155. hailed, cf. I. 60—" snow'd it down," VI. 50—" rain," and our ex- 
pression, " showered." 

158. she-society, cf. III. 147— "our fair she-world." 

161. lost their weeks. In the English universities, residence in col- 
lege for a certain number of terms is a condition of receiving a degree. 
Absences from dinner in hall beyond a certain limit render a stu- 
dent unable to count the week in which they occurred as weeks of 
residence toward his degree. The expression, then, simply denotes 
irregularity of attendance. 

163. cf. Herrick : " Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." 

164. In the French, from which the name of the flower comes, 
mignonette is the diminutive of mignon (darling). 

172. for true heart, for real affection. 



THE PRINCESS 21 

We seven stayed at Christmas up to read ; 176 

And there we took one tutor as to read : 

The hard-grain'd Muses of the cube and square 

Were out of season : never man, I think, 

So molder^d in a sinecure as he : 180 

For while our cloisters echoed frosty feet, 

And our long walks were stripped as bare as brooms. 

We did but talk you over, pledge you all 

In wassail ; often, like as many girls — 

Sick for the hollies and the yews of home — 185 

As many little trifling Lilias — played 

Charades and riddles as at Christmas here. 

And whafs my thought and when and where and how^ 

And often told a tale from mouth to mouth 

As here at Christmas/^ 

She remembered that : 190 

A pleasant game, she thought : she liked it more 
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest. 
But these — what kind of tales did men tell men. 
She wondered, by themselves ? 

A half-disdain 
Perched on the pouted blossom of her lips : 195 

And Walter nodded at me ; ^'^ He began, 
The rest would follow, each in turn ; and so 
We forged a sevenfold story. Kind ? what kind ? 



176. to read, the English expression for " to study." 

178. Mathematics. 

180. led such an idle life. Sinecure^ a Latin word (lit. " without 
care ") meaning a position of ease. 

183. pledge in wassail, drink your health ; from the Scandinavian 
expression wees heel, i.e., " good health to you." 

185. hollies and yews, Christmas decorations. 

187-8. Christmas games. 

191. Lilia, girl-like, prefers the quieter games. 



22 THE PRINCESS 

Chimeras^ crotchets, Christmks solecisms, 
Seven-headed monsters only made to kill 200 

Time by the hre in winter/^ 

"' Kill him now. 
The tyrant ! kill him in the summer too/^ 
Said Lilia ; '' Why not now ? '' the maiden Aunt. 
" Why not a summer's as a winter's tale ? 
A tale for summer as befits the time, 205 

And something it should be to suit the place. 
Heroic, for a hero lies beneath. 
Grave, solemn ! " 

Walter warp'd his mouth at this 
To something so mock-solemn that I laugh'd 
And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth 210 

An echo like a ghostly woodpecker. 
Hid in the ruins ; till the maiden Aunt 
(A little sense of wrong had touched her face 
With color) turn'd to me with " As you will ; 
Heroic if you will, or what you will, 215 

Or be yourself your hero if you will/^ 

" Take Lilia, then, for heroine," clamor'd he, 
'^ And make her some great Princess, six feet high. 
Grand, epic, homicidal ; and be you 

199. Chimera, a monster in Greek mythology, having the head of a 
lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon. The word here 
means a grotesque and incongruous tale, 
crotchets, whimsical fancies. 

solecism, something absurd and extravagant ; here an extrava- 
gant story. 

204. winter's tale. The reference is to Shakspeare's play, The Win- 
ter's Tale ; see 231 below. 

208. warp'd, twisted. 

210 sudden-shrilling. Tennyson's use of alliterative compound 
words is noticeable. Cf. *' point-painted," " work- wan," "gloomy- 
gladed," " mock-meek," etc. 

213. A little . . . color. She was annoyed at the frivolity of Walter 
and Lilia. 

319, homicidal, referring to LUia's speech, 127-137 above. 



I 



THE PRINCESS 23 

The Prince to win her ! '^ 

" Then follow me, the Prince/' 220 
I answered, ^' each be hero in his turn ! 
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream. — 
Heroic seems oar Princess as required — 
But something made to suit with Time and place, 
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 225 

A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 
A feudal knight in silken masquerade. 
And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments 
For which the good Sir Ealph had burnt them all — 
This were a medley ! we should have him back 230 
Who told the ' Winter's tale ' to do it for us. 
No matter : we will say whatever comes. 
And let the ladies sing us, if they will. 
From time to time, some ballad or a song 
To give us breathing-space." 

So I began, 235 

And the rest foUow'd : and the women sang 
between the rougher voices of the men. 
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind : 
And here I give the story and the songs. 

222. Shadows in a dream, foUowing each other without the slightest 
necessary connection. 
223.-228. Almost a complete prophecy of the poem. 

229. As witches. 

230. were, would indeed be. 

239. songs. The songs were introduced in the third edition of The 
Princess (1850). 



24 THE PRINCESS 



A Pkince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face. 
Of temper amorous, as the first of May, 
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl. 
For on my cradle shone the Northern star. 

There lived an ancient legend in onr house. 5 

Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt j 

Because he cast no shadow, had foretold. 
Dying, that none of all our blood should know 
The shadow from the substance, and that one 
Should come to fight with shadows and to fall. 10 

For so, my mother said, the story ran. 
And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less, 
An old and strange affection of the house. 
Myself too had weird seizures. Heaven knows what : 
On a sudden, in the midst of men and day, 15 

And while I walked and talked as heretofore, 
I seemed to move among a world of ghosts. 
And feel myself the shadow of a dream. 
Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane, 

2. Amorous, as the first of May, cf. Locksley Hall, 20 — 
" In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." 

4. I was born in the North. 

7. Because he cast no shadow, considered a proof of complicity with 
the Evil One. 

13. affection, disease. 

14 weird, supernatural. 

19. Galen of Pergamus (130-209), the greatest physician of ancient 
times. His name is used as a synonym for medical authority. So we 
have "a perfect Samson," etc. 



THE PRINCESS 25 

And paw'd his beard^ and mutter" d, '^ catalepsy/' 20 

My mother pitying made a thousand prayers ; 

My mother was as mild as any saint^ 

Half-canonized by all that look'd on her, 

So gracious was her tact and tenderness : 

But my good father thought a king a king ; 25 

He cared not for the affection of the house ; • 

He held his scepter like a pedant's wand 

To lash offense, and with long arms and hands 

Eeach'd out, and pick'd offenders from the mass 

For judgment. 

N'ow it chanced that I had been, 30 
While life was yet in bud and blade, betrothed 
To one, a neighboring Princess : she to me 
Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf 
At eight years old ; and still from time to time 
Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, 35 

And of her brethren, youths of puissance ; 
And still I wore her picture by my heart, 
And one dark tress ; and all around them both 
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen. 

But when the days grew nigh that I should wed, 40 
My father sent ambassadors with furs 
And jewels, gifts, to fetch her : these brought back 
A present, a great labor of the loom ; 
And therewithal an answer vague as wind : 

23. Half-canonized, regarded almost as a saint. 

27. pedant, here used in its old sense of schoolmaster. 

33. Proxy-wedded with a bootless calf. In the ceremony of proxy- 
marriage, which was common during the Middle Ages, the representa- 
tive of the bridegroom removed his boot and placed his log, bare to 
the knee, in the bridal bed. Anne of Brittany and Maximilian of 
Austria were so married in 1489. 



26 THE PRINCESS 

Besides^ they saw the king ; he took the gifts ; 45 

He said there was a compact ; that was true : 
But then she had a will ; was he to blame ? 
And maiden fancies ; loved to live alone 
Among her women ; certain^ would not wed. 

That morning in the presence-room I stood 50 

With Cyril and with Florian^ my two friends : 
The firsts a gentleman of broken means 
(His father's fault) but given to starts and bursts 
Of revel ; and the last^ my other hearty 
And almost my half-self^ for still we moved 55 

Together^ twinned as horse's ear and eye. 

Now^ while they spake^ I saw my father's face 
Grow long and troubled^ like a rising moon. 
Inflamed with wrath : he started on his feet, 
Tore the king's letter, snow'd it down, and rent 60 
The wonder of the loom thro' warp and woof 
From skirt to skirt ; and at the last he sware 
That he would send a hundred thousand men. 
And bring her in a whirlwind : then he chew'd 
The thrice-turn'd cud of wrath, and cook'd his spleen. 
Communing with his captains of the war. 66 

At last I spoke. ^'^ My father, let me go. 
It cannot be but some gross error lies 
In this report, this answer of a king, 



50. presence-room, audience-chamber. 

64. chewed the thrice-turned cud of wrath, meditated upon the 
insult. 

65. cooked his spleen, let his heart brood over his anger. The an- 
cients believed that the spleen was the seat of wrath, as the heart 
was that of love. 



THE PRINCESS 27 

Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable : 70 

Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen, 

Whatever my grief to find her less than fame, 

May rue the bargain made/^ And Florian said : 

" I have a sister at the foreign court. 

Who moves about the Princess ; she, you know, 75 

Who wedded with a nobleman from thence : 

He, dying lately, left her, as I hear. 

The lady of three castles in that land : 

Thro^ her this matter might be sifted clean/^ 

And Cyril whispered : " Take me with you too.'^ 80 

Then laughing, '^ What if these weird seizures come 

Upon you in those lands, and no one near 

To point you out the shadow from the truth ! 

Take me : 1^11 serve you better in a strait ; 

I grate on rusty hinges here : ^^ but " No ! ^^ 85 

Roared the rough king, ' you shall not ; we ourself 

Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead 

In iron gauntlets : break the council up/^ 

But when the council broke, I rose and past 
Thro' the wild woods that hung about the town ; 90 
Found a still place, and plucked her likeness out ; 
Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed 
In the green gleam of dewy-tassel'd trees : 
What were those fancies ? Wherefore break her troth ? 
Proud lookM the lips : but while I meditated 95 

A wind arose and rushed upon the South, 

93. dewy-tassel'd, hung with catkins like tassels. 

96-100. Cf. Shelley: Prometheus UnhoumU II. i-— 
" A wind arose among the pines ; it shook 
The clinging music from their boughs, and then 
Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts, 
Were heard : * Oh follow, follow, follow me V " 



28 THE PRINCESS 

And shook the songs^ the whispers, and the shrieks 
Of the wild woods together ; and a Voice 
Went with it;, ''' Follow, follow, thou shalt win/^ 

Then, ere the silver sickle of that month 100 

Became her golden shield, I stole from court 
With Cyril and with Florian nnperceived. 
Gat-footed thro^ the town and half in dread 
To hear my father's clamor at our backs 
With Ho ! from some bay-window shake the night ; 
But all was quiet : from the bastion'd walls 106 

Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt. 
And flying reached the frontier : then we crost 
To a livelier land ; and so by tilth and grange. 
And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness, 110 

We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers. 
And in the imperial palace found the king. 

His name was Gama ; crack'd and small his voice. 
But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind 
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines ; 115 

A little dry old man, without a star, 
Not like a king : three days he feasted us. 
And on the fourth I spake of why we came. 
And my betroth'd. " You do us. Prince,^' he said. 
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem, 120 

" All honor. We remember love ourselves 
In our sweet youth : there did a compact pass 

100-101. Before the crescent moon became fuU. 
106. BastionM, fortified with ramparts. 

109. tilth, tilled land, grange, farmhouse. 

110. bosk, a bush, a shrub. 

111. mother -city, capital city. 

116. without a star, with no decorations or orders of nobility. 



THE PRINCESS 29 

Long summers back^, a kind of ceremony — 

I think the year in which our olives faiFd. 

I would you had her^, Prince, with all my heart, 125 

With my full heart : but there were widows here. 

Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche ; 

They fed her theories, in and out of place. 

Maintaining that with equal husbandry 

The women were an equal to the man. 130 

They harp'd on this : with this our banquets rang ; 

Our dances broke and buzzed in knots of talk ; 

Nothing but this ; my very ears were hot 

To hear them : knowledge, so my daughter held. 

Was all in all ; they had but been, she thought, 135 

As children ; they must lose the child, assume 

The woman : then. Sir, awful odes she wrote. 

Too awful, sure, for what they treated of. 

But all she is and does is awful ; odes 

About this losing of the child ; and rhymes 140 

And dismal lyrics, prophesying change 

Beyond all reason : these the women sang ; 

And they that know such things — I sought but peace ; 

No critic I — would call them masterpieces : 

They mastered me. At last she begged a boon, 145 

A certain summer palace which I have 

Hard by your father's frontier : I said no. 

Yet being an easy man, gave it : and there 

All wild to found an University 

For maidens, on the spur she fled ; and more 150 



124. The failure of the olive crop was a matter of greater importance 
to the king than was the marriage of his daughter. 

136-137. lose the child, assume the woman, cease to be submissive, 
assert their rights as mature beings. Cf . Prologue, 133. 



30 TUE PRINCESS 

We know not^ — only this : they see no men^ 

Not ev'n her brother Arac^ nor the twins 

Her brethren^ tho^ they love her, look upon her 

As on a kind of paragon ; and I 

(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed 155 

Dispute betwixt myself and mine : but since 

(And I confess with right) you think me bound 

In some sort, I can give you letters to her ; 

And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance 

Almost at naked nothing/^ 

Thus the king ; 160 
And I, tho^ nettled that he seem'd to slur 
With garrulous ease and oily courtesies 
Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets 
But chafing me on fire to find my bride) 
Went forth again with both my friends. We rode 165 
Many a long league back to the North. At last 
From hills that look'd across a land of hope 
We dropt with evening on a rustic town 
Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve. 
Close at the boundary of the liberties ; 170 

There, entered an old hostel, calFd mine host 
To council, plied him with his richest wines. 
And showed the late-writ letters of the king. 

He, with a long low sibilation, stared 

158 in some sort, to a certain extent. 

163. frets, hindrances, impediments ; fret is here used in its etymo- 
logical sense of friction. 

167. a land of hope, because it contained that for which he hoped, i.e., 
the Princess. 

170. the liberties, an English legal term. Here is meant the estate of 
which the Princess had been given possession by her father, and over 
which she exercises jurisdiction. 

171. hostel, tavern, inn. 

174. sibilation, the low whistle of surprise. 



THE PRINCESS 31 

As blank as death in marble ; then exclaimed 175 

Averring it was clear against all rules 

For any man to go : but as his brain 

Began to mellow^, " If the king/^ he said^ 

" Had given us letters^, was he bound to speak ? 

The king would bear him out ; ^^ and at the last — 180 

The summer of the vine in all his veins — • 

" No doubt that we might make it worth his while. 

She once had past that way ; he heard her speak ; 

She scared him ; life ! he never saw the like ; 

She look'd as grand as doomsday and as grave : 185 

And he^ he reverenced his liege-lady there ; 

He always made a point to post with mares ; 

His daughter and his housemaid were the boys : 

The land^ he understood^ for miles about 

Was tilPd by women ; all the swine were sows, 190 

And all the dogs '' — 

But while he jested thus, 
A thought flash'd thro^ me which I clothed in act, 
Eemembering how we three presented Maid 
Or N"ymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast, 
In masque or pageant at my father^s court. 195 

We sent mine host to purchase female gear ; 
He bought it, and himself, a sight to shake 
The midriff of despair with laughter, holp 
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes 
We rustled : him we gave a costly bribe 200 

181. the summer of the vine, the genial warmth of the wine. 

187. to post, to run a service of coaches. 

188. boys, postilions. 

192. clothed in act, carried out in actual performance. 

193. presented, acted the role of. 

195. Masques and pageants were theatrical representations, usually- 
spectacular and allegorical in character, accompanied by music. They 
were often produced in the open air. Milton's Comus is a celebrated 
example of a masque. 

198. holp, old past tense of help. 



32 THE PRINCESS 

To guerdon silence^ mounted our good steeds. 
And boldly ventured on the liberties. 

We followed up the river as we rode. 
And rod*e till midnight when the college lights 
Began to glitter firefly-like in copse 205 

And linden alley : then we past an arch, 
Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings 
From four winged horses dark against the stars. 
And some inscription ran along the front, 
But deep in shadow : further on we gained 210 

A little street half garden and half house ; 
But scarce could hear each other speak for noise 
Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling 
On silver anvils, and the splash and stir 
Of fountains spouted up and showering down 215 

In meshes of the jasmine and the rose : 
And all about us peal'd the nightingale, 
Eapt in her song, and careless of the snare. 

There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign, 
By two sphere lamps blazoned like Heaven and Earth 
With constellation and with continent, 221 

Above an entry : riding in, we call'd ; 
A plump-armed Ostleress and a stable wench 
Came running at the call, and helped us down. 
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and saiFd, 225 

201. guerdon, reward. 

205. copse, cluster of trees or shrubs. 

206. linden alley, avenue of linden or lime trees. 
209. Cf. II, 178. 

218. her, it is the male nightingale that sings, but the poets almost 
universally make the bird a feminine songster. In classic legend the 
nightingale is Philomela, a woman. 

219. Pallas, in Greek mythology, the goddess of wisdom, and patron 
of Athens. 

220. blazoned, portrayed. 



THE PRINCESS 33 

Full-blown, before ns into rooms which gave 

Upon a pillared porch, the bases lost 

In laurel : her we ask'd of that and this, 

And who w ere tutors. " Lady Blanche/' she said, 

''And Lady Pysche/' ''Which was prettiest, 230 

Best-natured ? '^ " Lady Psyche.'^ " Hers are we,^' 

One voice, we cried ; and I sat down and wrote. 

In such a hand as when a field of corn 

Bows all its ears before the roaring East ; 

" Three ladies of the Northern empire pray 235 

Your Highness would enroll them with your own. 
As Lady Psyche's pupils/' 

This I seaFd : 
The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll. 
And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung. 
And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes : 240 
I gave the letter to be sent with dawn ; 
And then to bed, where half in doze I seemed 
To float about a glimmering night, and watch 
A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell 
On some dark shore Just seen that it was rich 245 

226. gave, opened upon, cf. Prologue, 93. 

233-^^4. In the slanting handwriting of women. 

238. Cupid, the god of passion, was blind to spiritual love, of which 
Uranian Venus was the patron deity. The reference is to Plato's 
Symposium. 

242. The Prince's dreams are colored by his vague hopes and expec- 
tations. 

Tennyson, in a letter to Mr. Dawson, tells us that the songs were not 
an afterthought, although they were not included in the poem until 
the publication of the third edition. " The public did not see,'' he 
says, '*that the child, as you say, was the heroine of the piece, and at 
last I conquered my laziness and inserted them." 

The central theme of all the songs is the power and endurance of the 
affections, and four refer especially to the love of children. The first 
of these sings the power of their love for their child in bringing about 
a reconciliation between a husband and wife who have quarreled, 
and is contrasted with Ida's careless disclaimer of the power of child- 
love in the lives of mature men and women : 

** Children die ; and let me tell you, girl, 
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die."— III. 236-7. 



34 THE PRINCESS 



II 

As thro' the land at eve we went, 

And pluck'd the ripen'd ears, 
We fell out, my wife and I, 
O we fell out I know not why, 

And kiss'd again with tears. 
And blessings on the falling out 

That all the more endears, 
When we fall out with those we love 

And kiss again with tears ! 
For when we came where lies the child 

We lost in other years, 
There above the little grave, 
O there above the little grave. 

We kiss'd again with tears. 

At break of day the College Portress came : 

She brought ns Academic silks^ in hue 

The lilac^ with a silken hood to each. 

And zoned with gold ; and now when these were on 

And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons, 5 

She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know 

The Princess Ida waited : out we paced, 

I first, and following thro^ the porch that sang 

All round with laurel, issued in a court 

Compact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengths 10 

Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay 

1. The second speaker here takes up the story. 

2. Academic silks, cf. Prologue, 143. 

10. bossM, carved in relief, like the " boss '' of a shield. 

11. frieze, that part of the building, in classic architecture, that lies 
between the edge of the roof and the bar that stretches along the tops 
of the supporting columns ; it is usually decorated in relief. 



THE PRINCESS 35 

Betwixt the pillarS;, and with great urns of flowers. 

The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes, 

Enring^d a billowing fountain in the midst ; 

And here and there on lattice edges lay 15 

Or book or lute ; but hastily we past;, 

And up a flight of stairs into the hall. 

There at a board by tome and paper sat, 
With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne, 
All beauty compassM in a female form, 20 

The Princess ; liker to the inhabitant 
Of some clear pla>net close upon the Sun, 
Than our man^s earth ; such eyes were in her head, 
And so much grace and power, breathing down 
From over her archM brows, with every turn 25 

Lived thro^ her to the tips of her long hands. 
And to her feet. She rose her height, and said : 

'' We give you welcome : not without redound 
Of use and glory to yourselves ye come. 
The first-fruits of the stranger : aftertime, 30 

And that full voice which circles round tbe grave. 
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me. 
What ! are the ladies of your land so tall ? " 
'' We of the court,^^ said Cyril. " From the court ^' 



13. The Muses were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. 
They presided over the various departments of art and science. They 
were Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Poly- 
hymnia, Urania, and Calliope. The three Graces, types of female 
loveliness, and attendant upon Aphrodite, were Euphrosyne, Aglaia, 
and Thalia. 

28. redound, requital. 

30. The first-fruits of the stranger, the first students from beyond the 
borders of her own country. 

31-32. Posterity will applaud your good sense, sliown in your desire to 
associate yourselves with my work. 



36 THE PRINCESS 

She answer'd^ ^^ then ye know the Prince ? ^^ and he : 

" The climax of his age ! as tho' there were 36 

One rose in all the worlds your highness that. 

He worships your ideal : ^^ she replied : 

" We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear 

This barren verbiage^ current among men, 40 

Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. 

Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem 

As arguing love of knowledge and of power ; 

Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, 

We dream not of him : when we set our hand 45 

To this great work, we purposed with ourself 

Never to wed. You likewise will do well. 

Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling 

The tricks, which make us toys of men, that so. 

Some future time, if so indeed you will, 50 

You may with those self-styled our lords ally 

Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale/^ 

At those high words, we, conscious of ourselves, 
Perused the matting ; then an officer 
Eose up, and read the statutes, such as these : 55 

Not for three years to correspond with home ; 
Not for three years to cross the liberties ; 
Not for three years to speak with any men ; 
And many more, which hastily subscribed, 
We enter'd on the boards : and '' Now,^^ she cried, 60 



38. your ideal, his ideal of.you ; cf. III. 193 ; lY. 430. 
40. verbiage, wordiness. 
43. arguing, indicating. 
50. will, wish. 

53. conscious of ourselves, conscious of our disguise. 
60, entered on the boards, the technical term at Camhridge for reg- 
istering as undergraduates. 



THE PRINCESS 37 

^^ Ye are green wood^ see ye warp not. Look^ our hall ! 

Our statues ! — not of those that men desire^ 

Sleek Odalisques or oracles of mode, 

Nor stunted squaws of West or East ; but she 

That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she 65 

The foundress of the Babylonian wall. 

The Carian Artemisia strong in war. 

The Ehodope, that built the pyramid, 

Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene 

That fought Aurelian, and the Eoman brows 70 

Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose 

Convention, since to look on noble forms 

Makes noble thro^ the sensuous organism 

That which is higher. lift your natures up : 

Embrace our aims : work out your freedom. Girls, 75 

Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd : 

63. Odalisques, slaves in a Turkish harem. 

oracles of mode, those who set the fashion ; authorities in mat- 
ters of dress. 

64. stunted, moraUy and sociaUy beaten down. 

she that taught the Sabine, Egeria, the wood-nymph, who' in- 
structed Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, and a Sabine by 
birth, in civil and religious government. 

65. she the foundress, Semiramis, a legendary queen of Assyria, who 
lived toward the close of the third century before Christ ; she is said 
to have built Babylon. 

67. The Carian Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, who helped 
Xerxes in the battle of Salamis (480 B.C.). 

68. The Rhodope, another form of Rhodopis, an Egyptian, to whom 
was wrongly attributed the building of the pyramid really erected 
by Nicotris. 

69. Clelia, a Roman heroine, a hostage given by the Romans to Lars 
Porsena of Clusium, leader of the expelled Tarquins. She escaped 
and swam across the Tiber to Rome. 

Cornelia, who died about 110 B.C., was the daughter of Scipio 
Africanus and the mother of the Gracchi, Tiberius and Caius. She 
was the ideal of Roman motherhood. 

the Palmyrene, Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, defied Aurelian, 
Emperor of Rome, who seized her possessions. She was captured in 
274, and taken to Rome. 

71. Agrippina, granddaughter of the Roman Emperor Augustus, 
and wife of Germanicus. She died in 33. 
72-74. Cf. Shelley, Prince Athanase, II. i : 

''The mind becomes that which it contemplates. 
And thus zonoras, by forever seeing 
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men," 



38 THE PRINCESS 

Drink deep, until the habits of the slave. 

The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite 

And slander, die. Better not be at all 

Than not be noble. Leave ns : you may go : 80 

To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue 

The fresh arrivals of the week before ; 

For they press in from all the provinces. 

And till the hive.'' 

She spoke, and bowing waved 
Dismissal : back again we crossed the court 85 

To Lady Psyche : as we entered in. 
There sat along the forms, like morning doves 
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, 
A patient range of pupils ; she herself 
Erect behind a desk of satin-wood, 90 

A quick brunette, well-molded, falcon-eyed. 
And on the hither side, or so she looked. 
Of twenty summers. At her left, a child. 
In shining draperies, headed like a star. 
Her maiden babe, a double April old, 95 

Aglaia slept. We sat : the Lady glanced : 
Then Florian, but no livelier than the dame 
That whispered '^ Asses' ears " among the sedge, 
'' My sister." '' Comely, too, by all that's fair," 
Said Cyril. '^ hush, hush ! " and she began. 100 

93. on the hither side, below. 

94. headed like a star, with golden hair 

95. a double April old, two years old. Cf Enoch Arden, 57 : 

" Ere he touch'd his one and twentieth May."" 

96. Aglaia, the name of one of the Grraces. meaning *' Brightness." 

97. the dame, the wife of Midas, King of Phrygia. He incurred the 
enmity of Pan, by deciding against him in a musical contest between 
Pan and Apollo. Pan turned his ears into those of an ass. His wife 
alone knew his secret, and not daring to tell any human being, but 
being unable to keep it to herself, she confided it to a hole in the earth, 
from which a plant grew up, whose leaves whispered it to the whole 
world. 



THE PRINCESS 39 

^^ This world was once a fluid haze of light, 
Till toward the center set the starry tides^ 
And eddied into suns^, that wheeling cast 
The planets : then the monster, then the man ; 
Tattoo'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins, 105 

Eaw from the prime, and crushing down his mate ; 
As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here 
Among the lowest/^ 

Thereupon she took 
A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past ; 
Glanced at the legendary Amazon 110 

As emblematic of a nobler age ; 
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those 
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo ; 
Ean down the Persian, Grecian, Eoman lines 
Of empire, and the woman's state in each, 115 

How far from just ; till warming with her theme 
She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique 
And little-footed China, touch'd on Mahomet 
With much contempt, and came to chivalry : 
When some respect, however slight, was paid 120 



101-104. A concise statement of that explanation of the origin of the 
Solar System known as the " Nebular Hypothesis." 

105. woaded, stained with woad, a plant from the leaves of which 
the ancient Britons made a dye with which they colored their skins. 

106. Raw from the prime, newly come into being, primitive. 

110. the legendary Amazon, a mythical nation of women warriors 
in Asia Minor. 

112. appraised, estimated the value of. 

the Lycian custom, that of tracing ancestry through the female 
line. 

113. In Etruscan wall-paintings, the women are represented as feast- 
ing with the men. Lar, a title of honor borne by the Etruscan priests. 

Lucumo, an Etruscan noble. 

117. fulmined, thundered. 

laws Salique, the French law which forbade the accession of a 
woman to the throne. 

118. little-footed, the feet of the Chinese women are artificially 
shortened, to conform to their arbitrary standard of beauty. 

119. chivalry, the social system existing in Europe in media? val times. 



40 THE PRINCESS 

To woman^ superstition all awry : 

However then commenced the dawn : a beam 

Had slanted forward^, falling in a land 

Of promise ; fruit would follow. Deep^ indeed. 

Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared 125 

To leap the rotten pales of prejudice, 

Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert 

None lordlier than them^selves but that which made 

Woman and man. She had founded ; they must build. 

Here might they learn whatever men were taught : 130 

Let them not fear : some said their heads were less : 

Some men^s were small ; not they the least of men ; 

For often fineness compensated size : 

Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew 

With using ; thence the man's, if more was more ; 135 

He took advantage of his strength to be 

First in the field : some ages had been lost ; 

But w^oman ripen'd earlier, and her life 

Was longer ; and albeit their glorious names 

Were fewer, scattered stars,^yet since in truth 140 

The highest is the measure of the man. 

And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, 

Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, 

But Homer, Plato, Verulam ; even so 

With woman : and in arts of government, 145 

Elizabeth and others ; arts of war, 

126. pales, bounds. 

135. if more were more, if the fact that one brain was greater than 
another as regards size implied that it was the greater inteUectuaUy. 

142. Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, the lowest forms of human life. 

143. glebe, soil. 

144. Homer, the world's greatest poet ; Plato, the great philosopher ; 
Verulam, the title of the barony conferred upon Bacon, quoted as the 
greatest of experimental philosophers. 

146. Elizabeth, queen of England, 1558-1603. 



THE PRINCESS 41 

The peasant Joan and others ; arts of grace, 

Sappho and others vied with any man : 

And, last not least, she who had left her place, 

And bow^d her state to them, that they might grow 150 

To use and power on this Oasis, lapt 

In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight 

Of ancient influence and scorn. 

At last 
She rose upon a wind of prophecy 
Dilating on the future ; '' everywhere 155 

Two heads in council, two beside the hearth. 
Two in the tangled business of the world. 
Two in the liberal offices of life. 
Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss 
Of science, and the secrets of the mind : 160 

Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more : 
And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth 
Should bear a double growth of those rare souls. 
Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world/^ 

She ended here, and beckoned us : the rest 165 

Parted ; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she 
Began to address us, and was moving on 
In gratulation, till as when a boat 
Tacks, and the slacken'd sail flaps, all her voice 
Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried 170 



147. The peasant Joan, Joan of Arc (1412-1431 \ who led the French 
army to victory at the siege of Orleans, and had Charles VII. crowned 
at Rheims. Two years later she was burned at the stake on a charge 
of witchcraft. 

148. Sappho, the great lyric poetess of Greece, born in Lesbos about 
600 B.C. 

149. she, the Princess, place, her royal station. 
166. parted, departed. 

168. gratulation, congratulation. 



42 THE PRINCESS 

" My brother ! '' " Well, my sister/' " 0/' she said, 

" What do you here ? and in this dress ? and these ? 

Why who are these ? a wolf within the fold ! 

A pack of wolves ! the Lord be gracious to me ! 

A plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all ! '^ 175 

" No plot, no plot,'' he answer'd. '' Wretched boy. 

How saw you not the inscription on the gate. 

Let no man entek in on pain of death ? " 

" And if I had," he answer' d, " who could think 

The softer Adams of your Academe, 180 

sister. Sirens tho' they be, were such 

As chanted on the blanching bones of men ? " 

'' But you will find it otherwise," she said. 

^^ You jest : ill jesting with edge-tools ! my vow 

Binds me to speak, and that iron will, 185 

That axelike edge unturnable, our Head, 

The Princess." " Well then. Psyche, take my life, 

And nail me like a weasel on a grange 

For warning : bury me beside the gate. 

And cut this epitaph above my bones ; 190 

Ktre lies a hrotJier hy a sister slain^ 

All for the common good of womanlcind/^ 

^^ Let me die too," said Cyril, ^^ having seen 

And heard the Lady Psyche." 

I struck in, 

178. Cf. I. 209, and the inscription which Dante ascribes to the Gate 
of Hen : 

" AU hope abandon, ye who enter here." 

180. the softer Adams, the women who were attempting to be man- 
like. Cf. "Galen,'' I. 19. 

Academe, academy. 

181. Sirens, legrendary se«-nymphs who, by the irresistible attraction 
of their singing, led on sailors to shipwreck on the rocks where they 
sang. 

189. For warning, to other weasels. 
192. All, just, simply. 



THE PRINCESS 43 

'' Albeit so mask'd^ madam, I love the truth ; 195 

Eeceive it ; and in me behold the Prince 

Your countryman, affianced years ago 

To the Lady Ida : here, for here she was. 

And thus (what other way was left ?) I came/^ 

'' sir, Prince, I have no country ; none ; 200 

If any, this ; but none. Whatever I was 

Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. 

Affianced, Sir ? love-whispers may not breathe 

Within this vestal limit, and how should I, 

Who am not mine, say, live : the thunderbolt 205 

Hangs silent ; but prepare : I speak ; it f alls.^^ 

'' Yet pause,^^ I said : " for that inscription there, 

I think no more of deadly lurks therein. 

Than in a clapper clapping in a garth 

To scare the fowl from fruit : if more there be, 210 

If more and acted on, what follows ? war ; 

Your own work marred : for this your Academe, 

Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo 

Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass 

With all fair theories only made to gild 215 

A stormless summer.^' " Let the Princess judge 

Of that," she said : '' farewell. Sir — and to you. 

I shudder at the sequel, but I go." 

^^ Are you that Lady Psyche," I rejoinM, 
'' The fifth in line from that old Florian, 220 

204. vestal, maiden. The name comes from the Latin goddess to 
whose service only virgins were consecrated. 

205. who am not mine, who am subject to the wiU of the Princess. 
209. clapper, a smaU windmiU set on a pole which, when turned by 

the wind, makes a clapping sound, 
garth, a fruit-garden. 
213. in the halloo, in the tumult of war. 



44 THE PRINCESS 

Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall 

(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow 

Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights) 

As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell, 

And all else fled ? we point to it, and we say, 225 

' The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold. 

But branches current yet in kindred veins/ '^ 

" Are you that Psyche/' Florian added ; " she 

With whom I sang about the morning hills, 

Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly, 230 

And snared the squirrel of the glen ? are you 

That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow. 

To smooth my pillow, mix the foaming draught 

Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read 

My sickness down to happy dreams ? are you 235 

That brother-sister Psyche, both in one ? 

You were that Psyche, but what are you now ? '' 

^^ You are that Psyche,'' Cyril said, '' for whom 

I would be that forever which I seem, 

Woman, if I might sit beside your feet, 240 

And glean your scattered sapience." 

Then once more, 
" Are you that Lady Psyche," I began, 
" That on her bridal morn before she past 
From all her old companions, when the king 
Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties 245 



222-223. beetle brow sun-shaded, with eyebrows so heavy that they 
shaded his eyes from the sun. 

224. bestrode, to defend him. 

227. current, flowing vigorously. 

230. raced the purple fly, chased butterflies. 

234-5. read down, charmed away by reading to me. Cf. " blush away," 
III. 52. 

241. sapience, wisdom, 



THE PRINCKSS 45 

Would still be dear beyond the southern hills ; 

That were there any of our people there 

In want or perils there was one to hear 

And help them ? look ! for such are these and I/^ 

''^ Are you that Psyche/^ Florian askM^ ^^to whom, 250 

In gentler days^, your arrow-wounded fawn 

Came flying while you sat beside the well ? 

The creature laid his muzzle on your lap, 

And sobb'd, and you sobVd with it, and the blood 

Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept. 255 

That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept. 

by the bright head of my little niece, 

You were that Psyche, and what are you now ? '' 

'^'^You are that Psyche,'' Cyril said again, 

'^ The mother of the sweetest little maid 260 

That ever crow'd for kisses." 

'' Out upon it ! " 
She answer'd, ^^ peace ! and why should I not play 
The Spartan Mother with emotion, be 
The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind ? 
Him you call great : he for the common weal, 265 
The fading politics of mortal Eome, 
As I might slay this child, if good need were. 
Slew both his sons : and I, shall I, on whom 
The secular emancipation turns 
Of half this world, be swerved from right to save 270 

255. kirtle, dress. 

262. play the Spartan mother with emotion, the Spartans taugrht that 
man^s first duty was to the state, and that family affection, when it 
conflicted with this dnty, oug:ht to be disregarded. 

264. Lucius Junius Brutus, who was chosen Consul when the Tarquins 
were expelled from Rome (509 B.C.), and who ordered the death of his 
sons when he discovered that they were in a conspiracy to restore the 
Tarquins to the throne. 

269. secular, enduring through the ages. 



46 THE PRINCESS 

A prince^ a brother ? a little will I yield. 

Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. 

hard, when love and duty clash ! I fear 

My conscience will not count me fleckless ; yet — 

Hear my conditions : promise (otherwise 275 

You perish) as you came, to slip away 

To-day, to-morrow, soon : it shall be said. 

These women were too barbarous, would not learn ; 

They fled, who might have shamed us : promise, all.^^ 

What could we else, we promised each ; and she, 280 
Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced 
A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused 
By Florian ; holding out her lily arms. 
Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said : 
^^ I knew you at the first : tho^ you have grown 285 

You scarce have altered : I am sad and glad 
To see you, Florian. / give thee to death. 
My brother ! it was duty spoke, not I. 
My needful seeming harshness, pardon it. 
Our mother, is she well ? ^^ 

With that she kiss'd 290 
His forehead, then, a moment after, clung 
About him, and betwixt them blossomed up 
Prom out a common vein of memory 
Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth. 
And far allusion, till the gracious dews 295 

Began to glisten and to fall : and while 
They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice. 



5. far allusion, aUusions to events that happened long ago. 
gracious dews, loving tears. 



THE PRli^^CESS . 47 

^' I brought a message here from Lady Blanche/^ 

Back started she, and turning round we saw 

The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, 300 

Melissa, with her hand upon the lock, 

A rosy blonde, and in a college gown, 

That clad her like an April daffodilly 

(Her mother's color) with her lips apart. 

And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, 305 

As bottom agates seen to wave and float 

In crystal currents of clear morning seas. 

So stood that same fair creature at the door. 
Then Lady Psyche, '^ Ah — Melissa — you ! 
You heard us ? " and Melissa, " pardon me, 310 

I heard, I could not help it, did not wish : 
But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not, 
Nor think I bear that heart within my breast. 
To give three gallant gentlemen to death/' 
'' I trust you," said the other, " for we two 315 

Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine : 
But yet your mother's jealous temperament — 
Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove 
The Danaid of a leaky vase, for fear 
This whole foundation ruin, and I lose 320 

My honor, these their lives." " Ah, fear me not," 
Eeplied Melissa ; " no — I would not tell, 

301. Melissa, a Greek name meaning *' Honey."* 

304. her mother's color, the color worn by those of the students who 
were the pupils of Lady Blanche. 

305. fair, easily seen. 

319 The Danaid of a leaky vase ; the reference is to the fifty daughters 
of Danaiis, who murdered their husbands, and were condemned, for 
this crime, forever to carry water in sieves. The expression means 
here : " Do not let the secret slip from you." 

320. foundation, establishment. 



48 THE PRINCESS 

NO;, not for all Aspasia's cleverness^ 

Noy not to answer^, Madam^ all those hard things 

That Sheba came to ask of Solomon/^ 

'^ Be it so/^ the other^ ^^ that we still may lead 

The new light up, and culminate in peace, 

For Solomon may come to Sheba yet/^ 

Said Cyril, " Madam, he the wisest man , 

Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls 330 

Of Lebanonian cedar : nor should you 

(Tho^ Madam you should answer, we would ask) 

Less welcome find among us, if you came 

Among us, debtors for our lives to you. 

Myself for something more/^ He said not what, 335 

But ^^ Thanks,^^ she answered ; ^^ Go : we have been too 

long 
Together : keep your hoods about the face ; 
They do so that affect abstraction here. 
Speak little ; mix not with the rest ; and hold 
Your promise : all, I trust, may yet be well/^ 340 

We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the child. 
And held her round the knees against his waist. 
And blew the swolFn cheek of a trumpeter, 
While Psyche watched them, smiling, and the child 
Push'd her flat hand against his face and laughed ; 345 
And thus our conference closed. 

And then we stroU'd 



323. Aspasia (440 B.C.), friend of Pericles, and the most inteUeQtual 
woman in Athens at the time of its greatest prosperity. 

325. Sheba, the queen of Sheba, who came to test Solomon's wisdom 
by hard questions. 

331. Lebanonian cedar. The cedars of Lebanon, in the north of Pales- 
tine, were famous for their excellence. 

335. something more, his awakening love for her. 




THE PRINCESS . 49 

For half the day thro^ stately theaters 

Benched crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard 

The grave Professor. On the lecture slate 

The circle rounded under female hands 350 

With flawless demonstration : follow^ then * 

A classic lecture;, rich in sentiment. 

With scraps of thunderous epic licted out 

By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies 

And quoted odes, and jevv^els five words long 355 

That on the stretched forefinger of all Time 

Sparkle for ever ; then we dipt in all 

That treats of whatsoever is, the State, 

The total chronicles of man, the mind. 

The morals, something of the frame, the rock, 360 

The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower, 

Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest. 

And whatsoever can be taught and known ; 

Till like three horses that have broken fence, 

And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn, 365 

We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : 

'' Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we." 

^' They hunt old trails," said Cyril, ^^ very well ; 

But when did woman ever yet invent ? " 

'' Ungracious ! " answered Florian ; '^ have you learnt 

No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talk'd 371 

The trash that made me sick, and almost sad ? " 

^' trash," he said, " but with a kernel in it. 

Should I not call her wise, who made me wise ? 

347. theaters, lecture-rooms with rows of seats in semicircles. 
353. licted, chanted or declaimed. 

355 jewels five words long, phrases so perfect in thought or expres- 
sion that they are immortal. 
360. frame, perhaps physiology. 



50 THE PRINCESS 

And learnt ? I learnt more from her in a flash, 375 

Than if my brainpan were an empty hull. 

And every Muse tumbled a science in. 

A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, 

And round these halls a thousand baby loves 

Ply twanging headless arrows at the hearts, 380 

Whence follows many a vacant pang ; but 

With me. Sir, enter'd in the bigger boy. 

The Head of all the golden-shafted firm. 

The long-limb'd lad that had a Psyche too ; 

He cleft me thro^ the stomacher ; and now 385 

What think you of it, Florian ? do I chase 

The substance or the shadow ? will it hold ? 

I have no sorcerer^s malison on me, 

No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I 

Flatter myself that always everywhere 390 

I know the substance when I see it. Well, 

Are castles shadows ? Three of them ? Is she 

The sweet proprietress a shadow ? If not. 

Shall those three castles patch my tattered coat ? 

For dear are those three castles to my wants, 395 

And dear is Sister Psyche to my heart, 

And two dear things are one of double worth. 

And much I might have said, but that ijiy zone 

Unmanned me : then the Doctors ! to hear 



376. brainpan, the part of the skuU that holds the brain. 

377. every muse, see note on II. 13. 

378. There are a thousand hearts here capable of love, but with noth- 
ing to arouse it. 

379. baby loves, Cupids. 

384. The long-limbed lad, Cupid himself, or, in Greek mythology, Eros 
(Love), who loved Psyche. 

387. The substance or the shac2ow 7 Cf. I. 9. 

388. malison, curse 

394. Shall her wealth raise me from my poverty ? 



^ 



THE PRINCESS 51 

The Doctors ! to watch the thirsty plants 400 

Imbibing ! once or twice I thought to roar, 

To break my chain, to shake my mane : but thou, 

Modulate me, Soul of mincing mimicry ! 

Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat ; 

Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet 405 

Star-sisters answering under crescent brows ; 

Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose 

A flying charm of blushes o^er this cheek. 

Where they like swallows coming out of time 

Will wonder why they came ; but hark the bell 410 

For dinner, let us go ! ^^ 

And in we streamed 
Among the columns, pacing staid and still 
By twos and threes, till all from end to end 
With beauties every shade of brown and fair. 
In colors gayer than the morning mist, 415 

The long hall glittered like a bed of flowers. 
How might a man not wander from his wits 
PiercM thro^ with eyes, but that I kept mine own 
Intent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams. 
The second-sight of some Astrsean age, 420 

Sat compassed with professors : they, the while, 
Discuss'd a doubt and tost it to and fro : 
A clamor thicken^, mixt with inmost terms 



403. mincing mimicry, an affected daintiness and delicacy of demea- 
nor. 

404. bassoon, a deep-toned instrument that takes the bass part. 
406. Star-sisters answering, bright eyes that respond to his glances. 
420. second sight, power of foreseeing the future. 

Astraean age ; the reference is to Astraea (Star-bright), the goddess of 
justice and the last of the deities to leave this earth when the Golden 
Age was past. The Greeks believed that she would be the first to 
return, should the Golden Age ever come again. 

423. inmost, most technical. 



52 THE PRINCESS 

Of art and science : Lady Blanche alone 

Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments^ 425 

With all her autumn tresses falsely brown, 

Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat 

In act to spring. 

At last a solemn grace 
Concluded, and we sought the gardens : there 
One walked reciting by herself, and one 430 

In this hand held a volume as to read, 
And smoothed a petted peacock down with that : 
Some to a low song oar^d a shallop by. 
Or under arches of the marble bridge 
Hung, shadowed from the heat : some hid and sought 
In the orange thickets : others tost a ball 436 

Above the fountain-jets, and back again 
With laughter : others lay about the lawns. 
Of the older sort, and murmured that their May 
Was passing : what was learning unto them ? 440 

They wished to marry ; they could rule a house ; 
Men hated learned women : but we three 
Sat muffled like the Fates ; and often came 
Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts 
Of gentle satire, kin to charity, 445 

That harmed not : then day droopt ; the chapel bells 
Caird us : we left the walks ; we mixt with those 
Six hundred maidens clad in purest white. 
Before two streams of light from wall to wall. 
While the great organ almost burst his pipes, 450 

427. shallop, a light boat. 

443. the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, described as muffled 
because in their breasts they hold the future hidden from mortal sight. 

448. clad in purest white : all the students, when they attended chapel, 
wore a white surplice over their ordinary dress. 



THE PEINCESS , 53 

Groaning for power, and rolling thro^ the court 

A long melodious thunder to the sound 

Of solemn psalms^ and silver litanies. 

The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven 

A blessing on her labors for the world. 455 

453. silver, clear and bell-like, as opposed to "brazen," etc. 

454. The work of Ida. She bad written and composed the psalms and 
litanies. 

See note to first song. " Sweet and Low " has been set to music "oy 
the English composer Joseph Barnby. It is a cradle-song, telling of 
the love of a father for his child. 



64 THE PRINCESS 



III 

Sweet and low, sweet and low, 

Wind of the western sea, 
Low, low, breathe and blow, 

Wind of the western sea ! 
Over the rolling waters go, 
Come from the dying moon,* and blow, 

Blow him again to me ; 
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. 

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Rest, rest, on mother's breast, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Father will come to his babe in the nest, 
Silver sails f all out of the west 

Under the silver moon : 
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. 

MoKN in the white wake of the morning star 

Came furrowing all the orient into gold. 

We rose^ and each by other drest with care 

Descended to the court that lay three parts 

In shadow^ but the Muses^ heads were touch'd 5 

Above the darkness from their native East. 

There while we stood beside the fount, and watch'd 
Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble, approached 
Melissa^ tinged with wan from lack of sleep, 

* dying moon, the setting moon. 

+ Silver sails, silvered by the moonlight 

1. The third speaker here takes up the narrative. 

the morning star: Venus, when west of the sun, is the morning 
star, and is then called Lucifer ; when east of the sun, Venus is the 
evening star, called Hesperus. 

6. their native East, Greece. 

9. wan, paleness. 



THE PRINCESS . 55 

Or grief^ and glowing round her dewy eyes 10 

The circled Iris of a night of tears ; 

'' And fly/' she cried, " fly^, while yet you may ! 

My mother know^s : '^ and when I ask'd her " how/' 

'' My fault/' she wept, " my fault ! and yet not mine ; 

Yet mine in part. hear me, pardon me. 15 

My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night 

To rail at Lady Pysche and her side. 

She says the Princess should have been the Head, 

Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms ; 

And so it was agreed when first they came ; 20 

But Lady Psyche was the right hand now. 

And she the left, or not, or seldom used ; 

Hers more than half the students, all the love. 

And so last night she fell to canvass you : 

Her countrywomen ! she did not envy her. 35 

' Who ever saw such wild barbarians ? 

Girls ? — more like men ! ' and at these words the snake. 

My secret, seem'd to stir within my breast ; 

And oh. Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek 

Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye 30 

To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd : 

' marvelously modest maiden, you ! 

Men ! girls, like men ! why, if they had been men 

You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus 

For wholesale comment.' Pardon, I am shamed 35 

That I must needs repeat for my excuse 



11. Iris, in Greek mythology the rainbow here, dark rings under the 
eyes, caused by weeping. 

17. her side, that part of the university under her supervision. 

30. lynx, keen as the eye of a lynx. 

34. set in rubric, printed in red (liere, a blush), like the capital letters 
in old manuscripts. 



56 THE PRINCESS 

What looks so little graceful : ^ men ^ (for still 

My mother went revolving on the word);, 

^And so they are^, — very like men indeed — 

And with that woman closeted for hours ! ^ 40 

Then came these dreadful words out one by one, 

^ Why — these — are — men ; ' I shuddered : "' and you 

know it/ 
' ask me nothing/ I said : ' And she knows too. 
And she conceals it/ So my mother clutch'd 
The truth at once, but with no word from me ; 45 

And now thus early risen she goes to inform 
The Princess : Lady Psyche will be crushed ; 
But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly : 
But heal me with your pardon ere you go/^ 

'' What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush ? ^^ 50 

Said Cyril : " Pale one, blush again: than wear 
Those lilies, better blush our lives away. 
Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven/^ 
He added, " lest some classic Angel speak 
In scorn of us, ' They mounted, Ganymedes, 55 

To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn/ 
But I will melt this marble into wax 
To yield us farther furlough /^ and he went. 

Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought 
He scarce would prosper. " Tell us,^^ Florian ask'd, 

51. than wear those lilies, than be so pale. 
54. classic, versed in the classics. 

Angel, used for " student," to keep up the metaphor of " Heaven.'' 
55-56, Ganymedes, a Phrygian boy, was taken up to heaven to be the 
cup-bearer of the gods. 

Vulcan was cast out of heaven by his mother, Juno, because of 
his ugliness. 
57. this marble. Lady Blanche. 




THE PRINCESS , 57 

^^How grew this feud betwixt the right and left/^ 61 

'^ long ago/^ she said, " betwixt these two 

Division smoulders hidden ; ^tis my mother, 

Too jealous, often fretful as the wind 

Pent in a crevice : much I bear with her : 65 

I never knew my father, but she says 

(God help her) she was wedded to a fool ; 

And still she raiFd against the state of things. 

She had the care of Lady Ida's youth. 

And from the Queen's decease she brought her up. 70 

But when your sister came she won the heart 

Of Ida : they were still together, grew 

(For so they said themselves) inosculated ; 

Consonant chords that shiver to one note ; 

One mind in all things : yet my mother still 75 

Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories. 

And angled with them for her pupiFs love : 

She calls her plagiarist ; I know not what : 

But I must go : I dare not tarry,'' and light, 

As flies the shadow of a bird, she fled. 80 

Then murmiir'd Florian, gazing after her, 
^^An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. 
If I could love, why this were she : how pretty 
Her blushing was, and how she blush'd again. 
As if to close with Cyril's random wish : 85 

Not like your Princess cramm'd with erring pride, 
ISTor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow." 

62. long ago, for a long: time. 

73. inosculated, blended into one. 

74. consonant, harmonizing. " If there be in the same room two 
strinf^ed instruments, a note struck on a chord of one wiU cause the 
corresponding chord in the other'' (WaUace) ; j.r., the union of their 
minds was so complete that any emotion in the heart of one found its 
response in the heart of the other. 



58 THE PRINCESS 

'' The crane/^ I said, " may chatter of the crane, 
The dove may murmur of the dove, but I 
An eagle clang an eagle to the sphere. 90 

My princess, my princess ! true she errs. 
But in her own grand way : being herself 
Three times more noble than three score of men. 
She sees herself in every woman else. 
And so she wears her error like a crown 95 

To blind the truth and me : for her, and her, 
Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix 
The nectar ; but — ah she — whene'er she moves 
The Samian Here rises and she speaks 
A Memnon smitten with the morning Sun/' 100 

So saying from the court we paced, and gain'd 
The terrace ranged along the Northern front, 
And leaning there on those balusters, high 
Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale 
That blown about the foliage underneath, 105 

And sated with the innumerable rose. 
Beat balm upon our eyelids. Hither came 
Cyril, and yawning, '' hard task," he cried ; 
'' No fighting shadows here ! I forced a way 
Thro' solid opposition crabb'd and gnarl'd. 110 



90. clang, with ringing note, sphere, the sphere of the heavens. 
94. She sees her own nobility in aU women. 

96. her, and her, as for the other two. 

97. Hebe, in Greek mythology the cup-bearer at the banquets of the 
gods before Ganymedes. 

99 Samian Here, queen of the gods and wife of Zeus; her favorite 
city was Samos on the ^gean Sea. 

100. Memnon, the name incorrectly given to an immense statue at 
Thebes in Egypt, which, when struck by the rays of the rising sun, 
was said to give forth music. 

104. empurpled champaign, the open fields lying blue in the distance. 

109. See 1. 10. 



THE PRINCESS . 59 

Better to clear prime forests^, heave and thump 

A league of street in summer solstice down. 

Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman. 

I knocked and, bidden, entered ; found her there 

At point to move, and settled in her eyes 115 

The green malignant light of coming storm. 

Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oil'd. 

As man's could be ; yet maiden-meek I pray'd 

Concealment : she demanded who we were, 

And why we came ? I fabled nothing fair, 120 

But, your example pilot, told her all. 

Up went the hushed amaze of hand and eye. 

But when I dwelt upon your old affiance, 

She answer^ sharply that I talked astray. 

I urged the fierce inscription on the gate 125 

And our three lives. True — we had limed ourselves 

With open eyes, and we must take the chance. 

But such extremes, I told her, well might harm 

The woman's cause. ' Not more than now,' she said, 

' So puddled as it is with favoritism.' 130 

I tried the mother's heart. Shame might befall 

Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew : 

Her answer was, ' Leave me to deal with that.' 

I spoke of war to come and many deaths. 

And she replied, her duty was to speak, 135 

111. prime See II. 106. 

112. summer solstice, the point when the sun seems to stand still in 
his journey toward the north, before beginning to turn back toward 
the south, and is nearer to the earth than at any other time of the year. 
In the northern hemisphere this occurs on the 21st of June. 

115. at point to move, on the point of moving. 
1?0. I fabled nothing fair, invented no pleasant lie. 

121. your example pilot. Cf. II. 195. 

122. She threw up her hands and her eyes in amazement. 

125. inscription. Cf. II 178. 

126. limed, ensnared as birds with bird-lime. 
130. puddled, polluted. 



60 THE PRINCESS 

And duty duty, clear of consequences. 

I grew discouraged. Sir ; but since I knew 

No rock so hard but tliat a little wave 

May beat admission in a thousand years, 

I recommenced; ' Decide not ere you pause. 140 

I find you here but in the second place, 

Some say the third — the authentic foundress you 

I offer boldly : we will seat you highest : 

Wink at our advent : help my prince to gain 

His rightful bride, and here I promise you 145 

Some palace in our land, where you shall reign 

The head and heart of all our fair she-world, 

And your great name flow on with broadening time 

For ever.^ Well, she balanced this a little. 

And told me she would answer us to-day, 150 

Meantime be mute : thus much, nor more I gain'd.^^ 

He ceasing, came a message from the Head. 
'^ That afternoon the Princess rode to take 
The dip of certain strata to the North. 
Would we go with her ? we should find the land 155 
Worth seeing ; and the river made a fall 
Out yonder : ^^ then she pointed on to where 
A double hill ran up his f urrowy forks 
Beyond the thick-leaved platans of the vale. 

Agreed to, this, the day fled on thro' all 160 

136. clear of, regardless of. 

142. authentic, as if she were already foundress in fact; a piece of 
clever flattery. 

148. broadening, like a river. 

153-4. to take the dip, a geological expression : to measure the incli- 
nation of the strata to the horizon. 

158. ran up his furrowy forks, raised up two peaks, like a two-pronged 
fork. 

159. platan, plane-tree. 



THE PRINCESS 



61 



Its range of duties to the appointed hour. 

Then summoned to the porch we went. She stood 

Among her maidens, higher by the head, 

Her back against a pillar, her foot on one 

Of those tame leopards. Kittenlike he rolFd 165 

And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near ; 

I gazed. On a sudden my strange seizure came 

Upon me, the weird vision of our house : 

The Princess Ida seem'd a hollow show, 

Her gay-furr'd cats a painted fantasy, 170 

Her college and her maidens, empty masks, 

And I myself the shadow of a dream. 

For all things were and were not. Yet I felt 

My heart beat thick with passion and with awe ; 

Then from my breast the involuntary sigh 175 

Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes 

That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook 

My pulses, till to horse we got, and so 

Went forth in long retinue following up 

The river as it narrowed to the hills. 180 

I rode beside her and to me she said : 
'' friend, we trust that you esteemed us not 
Too harsh to your companion yestermorn ; 
Unwillingly we spake." ^^ Wo — not to her," 
I answerM, " but to one of whom we spake 185 

Your Highness might have seemM the thing you say." 

170. cats, her leopards. 

179. retinue, pronounced with the accent on the second syUable, as in 
Guinevere, 382 : 

" Of his and her retinue moving/' 
and in Shakspeare and Milton. 

188. yestermorn. Cf. II 39 

185. one, the Prince himself. 

186. the thing you say, i.e., ** too harsh," 183 above. 



62 THE PRINCESS 

" Again ? ^^ she cried^ '' are you ambassadresses 
From him to me ? we give you^ being strange, 
A license : speak, and let the topic die/^ 

I stammer'd that I knew him — could have wished — 
" Our king expects — was there no precontract ? 191 
There is no truer-hearted — ah, you seem 
All he prefigured, and he could not see 
The bird of passage flying south, but long'd 
To follow : surely, if your Highness keep 195 

Your purport, you will shock him ev'n to death, 
Or baser courses, children of despair/^ 

'' Poor boy,^^ she said, " can -he not read — no books ? 
Quoit, tennis, ball — no games ? nor deals in that 
Which men delight in, martial exercise ? 200 

To nurse a blind ideal like a girl, 
Methinks he seems no better than a girl ; 
As girls were once, as we ourself have been : 
We had our dreams ; perhaps he mixt with them : 
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it, 205 

Being other — since we learnt our meaning here. 
To lift the woman^s falFn divinity 
Upon an even pedestal with man/^ 

She paused, and added with a haughtier smile : 
" And as to precontracts, we move, my friend, 210 

189. a license, liberty to speak. 

199. tennis, not lawn tennis, but a much more arduous game played 
in a closed court, like hand-ball. 
204. dreams, fancies 

206 being: other, being changed from what we were. Cf. In MemO' 
Ham, XLY. 7-8 : 

" I am not what I see, 
And other than the things I touch." 



THE PRINCESS 63 

At no man^s beck^ but know onrself and thee, 

Vashti^ noble Vashti ! Summoned out 
She kept her state, and left the drunken king 
To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms/^ 

'' Alas your Highness breathes full East/^ I said, 215 
^' On that which leans to you. I know the Prince, 

1 prize his truth : and then how vast a work 
To assail this gray preeminence of man ! 

You grant me license ; might I use it ? think ; 

Ere half be done perchance your life may fail ; 220 

Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan. 

And takes and ruins all ; and thus your pains 

May only make that footprint upon sand 

Which old recurring waves of prejudice 

Eesmooth to nothing : might I dread that you, 225 

With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds 

For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss. 

Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due. 

Love, children, happiness ? ^^ 

And she exclaimM, 
'^ Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild ! 230 
What ! tho^ your Princess love were like a God's, 
Have we not made ourself the sacrifice ? 
You are bold indeed : we are not talkM to thus : 



212. Vashti, wife of Ahasuerus, king of India and Ethiopia, who 
refused to obey the commandment of the king to come to the banquet 
that he had made for his princes. Cf . Esther, i. 10-12. 

214. Shushan, the palace of Ahasuerus. Cf. Esther, i. 2. 

215. breathes full East, cold like the east wind, 
218 gray, hoary with age, long established. 
227. issue, children. 

yet, in spite of fame and your great deeds. 
233. we are not talk'd to thus, are not accustomed to such familiarity. 



64 THE PRINCESS 

Yet will we say for children^ would they grew 

Like field-flowers everywhere ! we like them well : 235 

But children die ; and let me tell you^ girl. 

However you babble, great deeds cannot die ; 

They with the sun and moon renew their light 

For ever, blessing those that look on them. 

Children — that men may pluck them from our hearts, 

Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves — 241 

— children — there is nothing upon earth 

More miserable than she that has a son 

And sees him err : nor would we work for fame ; 

Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause of Great, 

Who learns the one pou sto whence after-hands 246 

May move the world, tho^ she herself effect 

But little : wherefore up and act, nor shrink 

For fear our solid aim be dissipated 

By frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been, 250 

In lieu of many mortal flies, a race 

Of giants living, each, a thousand years. 

That we might see our own work out, and watch 

The sandy footprint harden into stone.^^ 

I answered nothing, doubtful in myself 255 

If that strange Poet-Princess with her grand 
Imaginations might at all be won. 
And she broke out interpreting my thoughts : 



241. break us with ourselves : chUdren are almost a part of the 
mother's own life, and it is through them that she can be most effect- 
ively reached for Injury. 

242-4. Cf . Proverhs of Solomon, 1. 10. 

246. POU STO, a phrase meaning **a place whereon to stand," taken 
from Archimedes' (287-212 B.C.) famous words : 6b? nov (ttJ) koI k6<tixov 
KLvriaui, '' Give me a standing-place [some basis from which to work] 
and I will move the world.'' 

249. dissipated, scattered. 



THE PRINCESS 65 

'' 1^0 doubt we seem a kind of monster to you ; 
We are used to that : for women^ up till this 260 

Cramped under worse than South-sea-isle taboo, 
Dwarfs of the gynseceum, fail so far 
In high desire, they know not, cannot guess, 
How much their welfare is a passion to us. 
If w^ could give them surer, quicker proof — 265 

Oh if our end were less achievable 
By slow approaches, than by single act 
Of immolation, any phase of death. 
We were as prompt to spring against the pikes. 
Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it, 270 

To compass our dear sisters' liberties/^ 

She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear ; 
And up we came to where the river sloped 
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks 
A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the woods, 275 
And danced the color, and, below, stuck out 
The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roar'd 
Before man was. She gazed awhile and said, 
'^ As these rude bones to us, are we to her 



261 South-sea-isle taboo, a word in use among the islanders of Poly- 
nesia, meaning interdiction, something prohibited. 
262. Dwarfs, intellectuaUy. 

gynaeceum, the woman's apartments in a Greek house. 

268. immolation, self-sacrifice. 

269. spring against the pikes, like Publius Decius Mus (B.C. 350), 
who, on being informed by the oracle that the army whose general 
was slain should be victorious, sacrificed himself on the pikes of 
the enemy. 

270. down the fiery gulf, like Marcus Curtius (862 b c.\ who leaped 
into the chasm in the marketplace at Rome, which, the priest de- 
clared, would not close up until it had received, as a sacrifice, the 
chief element of Rome's greatness. Curtius believed that the sacrifice 
demanded was one of the city's young men, and, armed and on horse- 
back, plunged into the "fiery gulf." 

276. the color, in a rainbow. 

377. bones, fossil bone of some prehistoric animal. 



6Q THE PRINCESS 

That will be/' '' Dare we dream of that/' I ask'd, 280 

" Which wrought ns^ as the workman and his work^ 

That practice betters ? '' ^^ How/' she cried^ ^^ yon love 

The metaphysics ! read and earn our prize^, 

A golden brooch : beneath an emerald plane 

Sits Diotima^ teaching him that died 285 

Of hemlock ; our device ; wrought to the life ; 

She rapt upon her subject^, he on her : 

For there are schools for all." ^^ And yet/' I said, 

" Methinks I have not found among them all 

One anatomic." ^'^Nay, we thought of that/' 290 

She answer* d, ^^ but it pleased us not : in truth 

We shudder but to dream our maids should ape 

Those monstrous males that carve the living hound. 

And cram him with the fragments of the grave, 

Or in the dark dissolving human heart, 295 

And holy secrets of this microcosm, 

Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest, 

Encarnalize their spirits : yet we know 

Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs : 

Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, 300 

'Not willing men should come among us, learnt. 

For many weary moons before we came. 

This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself 

280-83. " Dare— betters ? " Is it not wrong to think of the Creator of 
mankind as an artisan that improves by practice ? 

285. Diotima, the instructress of Socrates, he who was condemned 
to drink the fatal hemlock, 

293-4. A reference to the alleged practice of vivisectionists of feeding 
the animals destined to vivisection on fragments of already dissected 
bodies. 

295. dark, mysterious. 

296. microcosm, a word derived from the Greek, meaning "little 
world," and applied to the human body in reference to the intricacy 
of its structure 

298. Encarnalize, make sensual, brutalize. 
300- casualty, accident. 



THE PRINCESS 67 

Would tend upon you. To your question now^ 

Which touches on the workman and his work. 305 

Let there be light and there was light : ^tis so : 

For waS;, and is^ and will be^, are but is ; 

And all creation is one act at once, 

The birth of light : but we that are not all, 

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, 310 

And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make 

One act a phantom of succession : thus 

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time ; 

But in the shadow will we work, and mold 

The woman to the fuller day.^^ 

She spake, 315 

With kindled eyes : we rode a league beyond, 
And, o^er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came 
On flowery levels underneath the crag. 
Pull of all beauty. '' how sweet,^^ I said 
(For I was half-oblivious of my mask), 320 

^' To linger here with one that loved us.^^ " Yea,^^ 
She answerM, " or with fair philosophies 
That lift the fancy ; for indeed these fields 
Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns. 
Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw 325 

The soft white vapor streak the crowned towers 



306-313. The statement of the Princess' idea of the relation of knowl- 
edge to Nature. Wallace paraphrases ; ** Creation was complete in 
one moment of the Divine volition— does not depend on Time for its 
development. The fault is in us, who, being of weak and limited 
vision, cannot see all at once, and are compelled to study Creation in 
a series of observations. This weakness in ourselves we transfer to 
Nature, whom we thus grow to regard as working bit by bit ; hence 
the fallacious conception of Time, which does not exist in Nature at 
all, only in ourselves, and that because of our imperfection." 

324. Elysian lawns, in Greek mythology, the Islands of the Blest, 
the home of the righteous after death. 

^5. Demigods, in Greek mythology, men of divine descent. 



68 THE PRINCESS 

Built to the Sun : ^^ then^ turning to her maids, 

" Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward ; 

Lay out the viands/^ At the word^ they raised 

A tent of satin^ elaborately wrought 330 

With fair Corinna^s triumph ; here she stood. 

Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek, 

The woman-conqueror ; woman-conquer'd there 

The bearded Victor of ten thousand hymns, 

And all the men mourned at his side : but we 335 

Set forth to climb ; then, climbing, Cyril kept 

With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I 

With mine affianced. Many a little hand 

Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks. 

Many a light foot shone like a jewel set 340 

In the dark crag : and then we turnM, we wound 

About the cliffs, the copses, out and in. 

Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names 

Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff. 

Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun 345 

Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all 

The rosy heights came out above the lawns. 

327. Built to the Sun, towering high into the heavens. 

331. Corinna (522-442), a Grecian poetess, who won five times over 
Pindar, the famous writer of odes, the prize for poetry in the public 
games. 

332. florid, blushing, blooming with youth. 
334. the bearded Victor, Pindar. 

344-45. mineralogical specimens, with names as '* stony " as them 
selves. 



THE TEINCESS 69 



IV 

The splendor falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits old in story : 
The long light shakes across the lakes. 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear, 

And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 
O sweet and far from cliff and scar 

The horns of Elfland * faintly blowing ! 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying : 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying 

O love, they die in yon rich sky. 

They faint on hill or field or river : 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul. 
And grow for ever and for ever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 

^' There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun, 

If that hypothesis of theirs be sound/' 

Said Ida ; " let us down and rest ; '^ and we 

Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices, 

By every coppice-feather'd chasm and cleft, 5 

Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to where below 

No bigger than a glowworm shone the tent 

See note to first song. Notice the onomatopoeia (see note to Pro- 
logue, 87-88) . 

♦ The horns of Elfland, the echoes. See note on Prologue, 66. Cf. 
VI. 349-351. 

1. The fourth speaker here takes up the narrative 

2. hypothesis, the Nebular Hypothesis, stated in II. 101-104. 

5. coppice-feathered, covered with light foliage. Cf. The Gardener^s 
Daughter^ 46 : 

" And all about the large lime feathers low.' 



70 THE PRINCESS 

Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she lean'd on me^ 
Descending ; once or twice she lent her hand, 
And blissful palpitations in the blood, 10 

Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell. 

But when we planted level feet, and dipt 
Beneath the satin dome and enterd in, 
There leaning deep in broider'd down we sank 
Our elbows : on a tripod in the midst 15 

A fragrant flame rose, and before us glow'd 
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold. 

Then she, ^^ Let some one sing to us ; lightlier move 
The minutes fledged with music : ^^ and a maid. 
Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang. 20 

'' Tears, idle tears, I know not what tliey mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 25 

*' Fresh as the first beam glittering- on a sail. 
That brings our friends up from the underworld, 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 30 



17. amber, amber-colored. 

gold, gold plate, goblets, etc. 
19. fledged, winged. 

21, One of the perfect lyrics of the English language; it was sug- 
gested to Tennyson by a visit to Tintern Abbey. 

22. some divine despair, the longing of every human soul for an 
ideal that cannot be defined. This is commonly* considered one of the 
evidences of the immortality of the soul. Cf Wordsworth's Ode on 
Intimat jo ??,<« of Im m o rtnl it y. 

27. the underworld, a word taken from the Greek mythology: the 
place of departed spirits. Here it refers to that part of the ocean that 
is under the horizon. 

29. verge, horizon. 



1 



THE PRINCESS 71 

" Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 35 

** Dear as remember'd kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign 'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love. 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
O Death in Life, the days that are no more." 40 

She ended with such passion that the tear, 
She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl 
Lost in her bosom : hnt with some disdain 
Answered the Princess, '' If indeed there haunt 
About the molder^d lodges of the Past 45 

So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men. 
Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool 
And so pace by : but thine are fancies hatched 
In silken-folded idleness ; nor is it 
Wiser to weep a true occasion lost, 50 

But trim our sails, and let old bygones be. 
While down the streams that float us each and all 
To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice, 
Throne after throne, and molten on the was1?e 
Becomes a cloud : for all things serve their time 55 

Toward that great year of equal mights and rights ; 
Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end 
Found golden : let the past be past ; let be 

47. cram our ears with wool. Odysseus, warned by Circe, of the irre- 
sistible fascination of the songs of the Syrens on the rocks, stopped 
the ears of his sailors and was himself bound to the mast that they 
and he might remain unmoved by the fatal songs. 

50. to weep for lost-opportunity. 

54-55. Throne . . . cloud, monarchies and long-established institutions 
cannot withstand the progress of the Sun of Civilization. The thought 
was perhaps suggested by recent European revolutions. 



72 THE PRINCESS 

Their cancel'd Babels : tho^ the rough kex break 

The starred mosaic^ and the beard-blown goat 60 

Hang on the shafts and the wild figtree split 

Their monstrous idols^ care not while we hear 

A trumpet in the distance pealing news 

Of better^ and Hope^ a poising eagle^, burns 

Above the unrisen morrow : ^^ then to me ; 65 

" Know you no song of your own land/^ she said, 

" K'ot such as moans about the retrospect, 

But deals with the other distance and the hues 

Of promise ; not a death's-head at the wine/^ 

Then I remember d one myself had made, 70 

"What time I watch'd the swalloXv winging south 
From mine own land, part made long since, and part 
Now while 1 sang, and maidenlike, as far 
As I could ape their" treble, did I sing. 

"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, 75 

Fly to lier, and fall upon her gilded eaves, 
And tell her, tell her, what I tell thee. 

** O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each. 
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, 
And d^rk and true and tender is the North. * 80 

**0 Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light 
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, 
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves. 



59. canceird Babels. Cf. Genesis^ xi. 1-9. The phrase refers to the 
dead past. 

kex, hemlock. 
61. hang on the shaft, stand aloft on the ruins. 

68. the other distance, the future as opposed to the past. 

69. a death's-head, a reference to the story of Herodotus, that, at 
their banquets, the Egyptians had a mummy brought in as a re- 
minder of the uncertainty of life ; the memento mori of the Romans. 

71. the swallow-winging south, cf. III. 194. 

82-83. pipe, trill, cheep, t^witter, onomatopoetic words. 



THE PRINCESS 



73 



** O were I thou that she might take me in, 
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart 85 

Would rock the snowy cradle till I died. 

''Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love 
Delaying as the tender ash delays 
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green ? 

** O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown : 90 

Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, 
But in the North long since my nest is made. 

** O tell her, brief is life but love is long, 
And brief the sun of summer in the North, 
And brief the moon of beauty in the South. 95 

'*0 Swallow, flying from the golden woods, 
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine 
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee." 

I ceased^ and all the ladies, each at each, 
Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time, 100 

Stared with great eyes, and laughed with alien lips. 
And knew not what they meant ; for still my voice 
Eang false : but smiling, " Xot for thee,^^ she said, 
" Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan 

Shall burst her veil : marsh-divers, rather, maid, 105 
Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow-crake 

84-86. Cf. Shakspeare, Vemis a?7f?^r7rw7/8, 1185-86 : 
"Lo! in this hollow cradle take thy rest. 
My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night." 
88. the tender ash delays, the ash is one of the last trees to come into 
leaf. 

100. Ithacensian suitors, in Homer's Odysseif^ those who sought the 
hand of Penelope, while her husband, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, was 
absent at the Siege of Troy and during his subsequent wanderings. 
On his return Pallas threw an enchantment over them so that their 
presentiment of their death at the hand of Odysseus caused them 
to laugh nervously without apparent reason. 

101. laughed with alien lips, constrainedly. Cf Homer, Odusseiu 
XX. 347: 

" Yj/a^/oLoio-t yeXtouiv aAAoTptotatv " (" laughing with Other men's jaws"). 

104. Bulbul, tlie Persian word for nightingale 
Gulistan, the Persian word for rose-garden. 

The love of the Nightingale for the Rose was a favorite subject 
of Hafiz, a celebrated Persian poet 

105. marsh-divers, as meadow-crake below, are birds of harsh voice. 



74 THE PRINCESS 

Grate her harsh kindred in the grass : and this 

A mere love-poem ! for such^ my friend. 

We hold them slight : they mind us of the time 

When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men, 110 

That lute and flute fantastic tenderness. 

And dress the victim to the offering up. 

And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, 

And play the slave to gain the tyranny. 

Poor soul ! I had a maid of honor once ; 115 

She wept her true eyes blind for such a one, 

A rogue of canzonets and serenades. 

I loved her. Peace be with her. She is dead. 

So they blaspheme the muse ! But great is song 

Used to great ends : ourself have often tried 120 

Valkyrian hymns, or into rhythm have dashed 

The passion of the prophetess ; for song 

Is duer unto freedom, force and growth 

Of spirit than to junketing and love. 

Love is it ? Would this same mock-love, and this 125 

Mock-Hymen were laid up like winter bats. 

Till all men grew to rate us at our worth, 

jSTot vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes 

To be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered 

Whole in ourselves and owed to none. Enough ! 130 

109. mind, remind. 

110. when we made bricks in Egypt, when, like the children of Israel 
in Egypt, we were slaves Cf. Exodvfi. i. 8-14. 

112. Ornament the victim for sacrifice 

117. canzonets, an Italian word meanine: a light song, like a serenade. 

121. Valkyrian In Norse mythologv, the Valkyrs (" Choosers of the 
Slain ") were the handmaidens of Odin, the ruler of the gods, who en- 
couraged warriors in battle, and bore the souls of those who died 
fighting to Valhalla, the Scandinavian heaven. Valkyrian hymns, 
then, are inspiring battle-songs. 

123. duer unto, more appropriate to. 

124. junketing, revelry. 

126. Hymen, the Latin god of marriage 

129-30. sphered whole in ourselves, perfect in our own nature. 

130. owed, rightly responsible. 



THE PRINCESS . 75 

But now to leaven play with profit, you, 
Know you no song, the true growth of your soil, 
That gives the manners of your country-women ? ^^ 

She spoke and turnM her sumptuous head with eyes 
Of shining expectation fixed on mine. 135 

Then while I dragged my brains for such a song, 
Cyril, with whom the bell-mouthM glass had wrought, 
Or mastered by the sense of sport, began 
To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch 
Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences 140 

Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him, 
I frowning ; Psyche -flushed and wannM and shook ; 
The lilylike Melissa drooped her brows ; 
" Forbear,^' the Princess cried ; " Forbear, Sir,^^ I ; 
And heated thro^ and thro^ with wrath and love, 145 
I smote him on the breast ; he started up ; 
There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd ; 
Melissa clamor'd, " Flee the death ; '' '' To horse,^^ 
Said Ida ; " home ! to horse ! '^ and fled, as flies 
A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk, 150 

When some one batters at the dovecote-doors, 
Disorderly the women. Alone I stood 
With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart, 
In the pavilion : there like parting hopes 
I heard them passing from me : hoof by hoof, 155 

And every hoof a knell to my desires, 
Clang'd on the bridge ; and then another shriek, 

137. with whom . . . had wrought, on whom the wine from "the 
bell-mouth'd glass" had taken effect. 
139. to troll, to sing jocularly, a catch, a light song. • 

154. parting, departing. Cf. "mind," 109 above, and "parted," II. 



76 THE PRINCESS 

" The Head, the Head, the Princess, the Head ! '' 
For blind with rage she niiss'd the plank, and roU'd 
In the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom : 160 
There whirled her white robe like a blossom\d branch 
Eapt to the horrible fall : a glance I gave, 
No more ; but woman-vested as I was 
Plunged ; and the flood drcAv ; yet I caught her ; then 
Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left 165 

The weight of all the hopes of half the world. 
Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree 
Was half-disrooted from his place and stoop'd 
To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave 
Mid-channel. Eight on this we drove and caught, 170 
And grasping down the boughs I gained the shore. 

There stood her maidens glimmeringly grouped 
In the hollow bank. One reaching forward drew 
My burthen from mine arms ; they cried " she lives : ^^ 
They bore her back into the tent : but I, 175 

So much a kind of shame within me wrought, 
Not yet endured to meet her opening eyes. 
Nor found my friends ; but pushed alone on foot 
(For since her horse was lost I left her mine) 
Across the woods, and less from Indian craft 180 

Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at length 
The garden portals. Two great statues. Art 



160. from glow to gloom, from the lighted tent to the darkness out- 
side. 

162. Rapt, snatched away. Cf. III. 273-5. 

166. half the world, the woman-half. 

172. glimmeringly, indistinct in the darkness. 

180 Indian craft, wood-craft, for which the American Indians were 
famous. 

183. Caryatids, in Greek architecture, pillars consisting of draped 
female figures which support the beam on which the frieze rests. 



THE PRINCESS i i 

And Science^ Caryatids, lifted up 

A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves 

Of open-work in which the hunter rued 185 

His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows 

Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon 

Spread out at top, and grimly spiked the gates. 

A little space was left between the horns, 
Thro^ which I clamber'd o^er at top with pain, 190 

Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks. 
And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue, 
Kow poring on the glowworm, now the star, 
I paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheeled 
Thro^ a great arc his seven slow suns. 

A step 195 
Of lightest echo, then a loftier form 
Than female, moving thro^ the uncertain gloom, 
Disturb^ me with the doubt " if this were she,^^ 
But it was Florian. ^^ Hist PIist,^^-he said, 
" They seek us : out so late is out of rules. 200 

Moreover ^ Seize the strangers ^ is the cry. 
How came you here ? '^ I told him : ^^ I,"^ said he, 
^^ Last of the train, a moral leper, I, 
To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, returnM. 
Arriving all confused among the rest 205 

With hooded brows I crept into the hall, 



184. valves, folding gates. 

185. the hunter, Actaeon, who, having surprised Diana bathing, was 
turned into a stag and torn to pieees by his own hounds. 

In the design of the gates his sprouting horns compose the pat- 
tern of spikes on top. 

194. Bear, the ronstellation of the Great Bear, composed of seven 
stars, and commonly called "the Dipper," which revolves once in 
twenty-four hours around the North Star. Its astronomical name is 
Ursa Major. 



78 THE PRINCESS 

And^ couchM behind a Judith^ underneath 

The head of Holofernes peepM and saw. 

Girl after girl was calFd to trial : each 

Disclaimed all knowledge of ns : last of all, 210 

Melissa : trust me, Sir, I pitied her. 

She, questionM if she knew us men, at first 

Was silent ; closer prest, denied it not : 

And then, demanded if her mother knew, 

Or Psyche, she affirmed not, or denied : 215 

From whence the Eoyal mind, familiar with her, 

Easily gathered either guilt. She sent 

For Psyche, but she was not there ; she call'd 

For Psyche^s child to cast it from the doors ; 

She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face ; 320 

And I slip out : but whither will you now ? 

And where are Psyche, Cyril ? both are fled : 

What, if together ? that were not so well. 

Would rather we had never come ! I dread 

His wildness, and the chances of the dark.'' 225. 

'^ And yet,'^ I said, " you wrong him more than I 
That struck him : this is proper to the clown, 
Tho' smock'd, or furrM and purpled, still the clown. 
To harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame 
That which he says he loves : for Cyril, however 230 
He deal in frolic, as to-night — the song 
Might have been worse and sinn'd in grosser lips 
Beyond all pardon — as it is, I hold 

207. Judith, the heroine of the Apocrypha, a Jewess who, when her 
native city, Bethulia, was besieged by the Assyrians under Holofernes, 
gained admittance to his tent, and cut his head off while he was asleep. 

212. knew us men, knew that we were men. 

217. either guilt, the guilt of each. 

227. proper to the clown, to be expected of the ill-bred. 



THE PEINCESS . 79 

These flashes on the surface are not he. 

He has a solid base of temperament : 235 

But as the water-lily starts and slides 

Upon the level in little puffs of wind;, 

Tho^ anchored to the bottom^, such is he/^ 

Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near 
Two Proctors leapt upon us^ crying^ '^ Ifames : ^^ 240 
He, standing still, was clutched : but I began 
To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind 
And double in and out the boles, and race 
By all the fountains : fleet I was of foot : 
Before me showered the rose in flakes ; behind 245 

I heard the puffed pursuer ; at mine ear 
Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not, 
And secret laughter tickled all my soul. 
At last I hooked my ankle in a vine. 
That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne, 250 

And falling on my face was caught and known. 

They haled us to the Princess where she sat 
High in the hall : above her droop'd a lamp, 
And made the single jewel on her brow 
Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head, 255 

Prophet of storm : a handmaid on each side 



236-8. Cf . Wordsworth, Excursion, V. : 

" And, like the water-lily, lives and thrives. 

Whose root is fixed in stable earth, whose head 

Floats on the tossing waves." 
240. Proctors. See note on Prologue, 113. 

242. thrid, thread. 

243. boles, large trunks of trees. 

250. Mnemosyne, memory. See note on II. 13. 

252. haled, dragged. 

255. mystic fire, an electrical ball of light that is sometimes seen play- 
ing about the masts of a ship. It is called by sailors St Elmo's fire, 
and is considered as prophetic of impending storm. 



80 THE PRINCESS 

Bow'd toward her, combing out her long black hair 
Damp from the river ; and close behind her stood 
Eight daughters of the plow, stronger than men. 
Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, 
And labor. Each was like a Druid rock ; 361 

Or like a spire of land that stands apart 
Cleft from the main, and waiFd about with mews. 

Then, as we came, the crowd dividing clove 
An advent to the throne : and therebeside, 265 

Half -naked as if caught at once from bed 
And tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay 
The lily-shining child ; and on the left, 
Bow'd on her palms and folded up from wrong, 
Her round white shoulder shaken with her sobs, 270 
Melissa knelt ; but Lady Blanche erect 
Stood up and spake, an affluent orator. 

'' It was not thus, Princess, in old days : 
You prized my counsel, lived upon my lips : 
I led you then to all the Castalies ; 275 

I fed you with the milk of every Muse ; 
I loved you like this kneeler, and you me 
Your second mother : those were gracious times. 
Then came your new friend : you began to change — 
I saw it and grieved — -to slacken and to cool ; 280 

Till taken with her seeming openness 

260. blowzed, with faces reddened. 

261. a Druid rock, great stones found at Stonehenge and other parts 
of England, and considered to be the altars of the Druids, the priests 
of the early Celts 

263. mews, sea-gulls. 

275. Castalies. Castalia was one of the fountains on Mount Parnas- 
sus, sacred to the Muses (see note on II. 13). " AH the Castalies,'' then, 
means " all the founts of knowledge and culture." 

281. taken, fascinated. 



THE PRINCESS 81 

You turned your warmer currents all to her, 

To me you froze : this was my meed for all. 

Yet I bore up in part from ancient love, 

And partly that I hoped to win you back, 285 

And partly conscious of my own deserts. 

And partly that you were my civil head. 

And chiefly you were born for something great. 

In which I might your fellow-worker be. 

When time should serve ; and thus a noble scheme 290 

Grew up from seed we two long since had sown ; 

In us true growth, in her a Jonah^s gourd. 

Up in one night and due to sudden sun : 

We took this palace ; but even from the first 

You stood in your own light and darkened mine. 295 

What student came but that you planed her path 

To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise, 

A foreigner, and I your countrywoman, 

I your old friend and tried, she new in all ? 

But still her lists were swelFd and mine were lean ; 

Yet I bore up in hope she would be known : 301 

Then came these wolves : ihey knew her : they endured. 

Long-closeted with her the yestermorn. 

To tell her what they were, and she to hear : 

And me none told : not less to an eye like mine 305 

A lidless watcher of the public weal. 

Last night, their mask was patent, and my foot 

Was to you : but I thought again : I f earM 

To meet a cold " We thank j^ou, we shall hear of it 

283. meed, reward. 

293. Jonah's gourd that grew up in a ni^ht. Cf. Jonah, iv. 5-11. 

295. In trying to lessen my influence you hurt your own power. 

296. planed, made easy. 

307. patent, easily discernible. 

307 8. my foot was to you, 1 was about to go to you. 



82 THE PRINCESS 

From Lady Psyche : ^^ you had gone to her^ 310 

She told^ perforce ; and winning easy grace, 

No doubt, for slight delay, remained among ns 

In our young nursery still unknown, the stem 

Less grain than touchwood, while my honest heat 

Were all miscounted as malignant haste 315 

To push my rival out of place and power. 

But public use required she should be known ; 

And since my oath was ta^en for public use, 

I broke the letter of it to keep the sense. 

I spoke not then at first, but watch'd them well, 320 

Saw that they kept apart, no mischief done ; 

And yet this day (tho' you should hate me for it) 

I came to tell you ; found that you had gone, 

Eidd^n to the hills, she likewise : now% I thought. 

That surely she will speak ; if not, then I : 325 

Did she ? These monsters blazon'd what they were, 

According to the coarseness of their kind. 

For thus 1 hear ; and known at last (my work) 

And full of cowardice and guilty shame, 

I grant in her some sense of shame, she flies ; 330 

And I remain on whom to wreak your rage, 

I, that have lent my life to build up yours, 

I that have wasted here health, wealth, and time, 

And talent, I — you know it — I will not boast : 

Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan, 335 



311. grace, pardon. 

313. nursery, a " nursery-garden " where young plants and trees are 
cared for. 

314. less grain than touchwood, soft and rotten rather than firm and 
vigorous. Touchwood is the name given to a kind of half-decayed 
wood. 

317. use, advantage Cf II. 29. 

326 blazon'd, proclaimed like a herald. 

328. my work, through my labors. 



THE PRINCESS . 83 

Divorced from my experience^ will be chaff 
For every gust of chance^ and men will say 
We did not know the real lights but chased 
The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread/' 

She ceased : the Princess answered coldly, '^ Good : 
Your oath is broken : we dismiss you : go. 341 

For this lost lamb (she pointed to the child) 
Our mind is changed : we take it to ourself /^ 

Thereat the Lady stretched a vulture throat, 
And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. 345 

^' The plan was mine. I built the nest/^ she said, 
'' To hatch the cuckoo. Eise ! ^^ and stooped to updrag 
Melissa : she, half on her mother propt. 
Half -drooping from her, turned her face, and cast 
A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, 350 

Which melted Florian^s fancy as she hung, 
A Niobean daughter, one arm out. 
Appealing to the bolts of Heaven ; and while 
We gazed upon her came a little stir 
About the doors, and on a sudden rushed 355 

Among us, out of breath, as one pursued, 
A woman-post in flying raiment. Fear 
Stared in her eyes, and chalked her face, and winged 
Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell 
Delivering seaPd dispatches which the Head 360 

Took half-amazed, and in her lion's mood 

339. the wisp, the ignis fatuus or wiU-of -the- wisp, a light seen in 
marshes. Cf Prologue, 64. 
347. the cuckoo, which lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, 
352. A Niobean daughter. Niobe, Queen of Thebes, had twelve chil- 
dren, and boasted that she was greater than Leto, who had only two, 
Artemis and Apollo. In revenge for this her children were slain, and 
she herself, standing in their midst, was turned to stone as she wept. 



84 THE PRINCESS 

Tore open^ silent we with blind surmise 

Regarding, while she read, till over brow 

And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom 

As of some fire against a stormy cloud, 365 

When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick 

Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens ; 

For anger most it seemM, while now her breast, 

Beaten with some great passion at her heart. 

Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard 370 

In the dead hush the papers that she held 

Rustle : at once the lost lamb at her feet 

Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam ; 

The plaintive cry jarr'd on her ire ; she crushed 

The scrolls together, made a sudden turn 375 

As if to speak, but, utterance failing her. 

She whirFd them on to me, as who should say 

" Read,^^ and I read — two letters — one her sirens. 

'' Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way 
We knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt, 
We, conscious of what temper you are built, 381 

Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell 
Into his father's hands, who has this night. 
You lying close upon his territory, 
Slipt round and in the dark invested you, 385 

And here he keeps me hostage for his son/^ 

The second was my father's running thus : 
'' You have our son : touch not a hair of his head : 

362. surmise, conjecture. 

366. rick, a stack of hay whicli the peasant burns in revenge. 
370. The irregular meter of this line indicates the disturbed beating 
of her heart in its surprise and wrath. Cf . II. 168-70, IV. 163-7, 195. 
385. invested, surrounded. 



THE PRINCESS . 85 

Kender him up unscathed : give him your hand : 
Cleave to your contract : tho^ indeed we hear 390 

You hold the woman is the better man ; 
A rampant heresy, such as if it spread 
Would make all women kick against their Lords 
Thro^ all the world, and which might well deserve 
Tliat we this night should pluck your palace down ; 395 
And we will do it, unless you send us back 
Our son, on the instant, whole/^ 

So far I read ; 
And then stood up and spoke impetuously. 

'' not to pry and peer on your reserve, 
But led by golden wishes, and a hope 400 

The child of regal compact, did I break 
Your precinct ; not a scorner of your sex, 
But venerator, zealous it should be 
All that it might be : hear me, for I bear, 
Tho^ man, yet human, whatsoever your wrongs, 405 
From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life 
Less mine than yours : my nurse would tell me of you ; 
I babbled for you, as babies for the moon. 
Vague brightness ; when a boy, you stooped to me 
From all high places, lived in all fair lights, 410 

Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south 
And blown to inmost north ; at eve and dawn 
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods ; 
The leader wild swan in among the stars 



400. golden, most precious, best. Cf . 58 above. 

401. regal compact ; cf. T. 33. 

414. The leader wild swan ; wild swans fly in a wedge-shaped figure, 
following the track of their leader. 



SQ THE PRINCESS 

Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light 
The mellow breaker murmur^ Ida. Kow, 416 

Because T would have reach'd yon, had yon been 
Sphered np with Cassiopeia, or the enthroned 
Persephone in Hades, now at length. 
Those winters of abeyance all worn out, 420 

A man I came to see you : but, indeed. 
Not in this frequence can I lend full tongue, 

noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait 
On you, their center : let me say but this. 

That many a famous man and w^oman, town 425 

And landskip, have I heard of, after seen 

The dwarfs of presage : tho' when known, there grew 

Another kind of beauty in detail 

Made them worth knowing ; but in you I found 

My boyish dream involved and dazzled down 430 

And mastered, while that after-beauty makes 

Such head from act to act, from hour to hour. 

Within me, that except you slay me here. 

According to your bitter statute-book, 

1 cannot cease to follow you, as they say 435 
The seal does music ; who desire^ you more 

Than growing boys their manhood ; dying lips. 
With many thousand matters left to do. 
The breath of life ; more than poor men wealth. 
Than sick men health — yours, yours, not mine — ^but 
half 

415. clang. Cf . III. 90. 

418. Cassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopia and mother of Andromeda. Here, 
the consteUation that bears her name Sphered up. set as a star. 

419. Persephone, wife of Hades or Pluto, king of the lower world. 

420. abeyance, inactivity, suspense. 
422. frequence, throng. 

426 landskip, olrl spelling of landscape. 

427. The dwarfs of presage. Cf. "less than fame," I. 72. 



THE PRINCESS 87 

Without you ; with you^ whole ; and of those halves 

You worthiest ; and however you block and bar 443 

Your heart with system out from mine, I hold 

That it becomes no man to nurse despair, 

But in the teeth of clenched antagonisms 445 

To follow up the worthiest till he die : 

Yet that I came not all unauthorized 

Behold your father's letter/^ 

On one knee 
Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dash'd 
Unopen'd at her feet : a tide of fierce 450 

Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips. 
As waits a river level with the dam 
Eeady to burst and flood the world with foam : 
And so she would have spoken, but there rose 
A hubbub in the court of half the maids 455 

Gathered together : from the illumined hall 
Long lanes of splendor slanted o^er a press 
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes. 
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes. 
And gold and golden heads ; they to and fro 460 

Fluctuated,, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale, 
All open-mouthM, all gazing to the light. 
Some crying there was an army in the land, 
And some that men were in the very walls. 
And some they cared not ; till a clamor grew 465 

As of a new-world Babel, woman-built. 



445. clench'd, determined, from the metaphor of clenched teeth or 
fists. 

455. court, the outer courtyard, lit up by the light from the windows 
of the hall where the Princess sat. 

466. Babel, a tower designed to reach to heaven, but during whose 
construction the tongues of the builders were confounded, so that no 
man might understand another. Cf. Genesis^ xi. 19. 



88 THE PRINCESS 

And worse-confounded : high above them stood 
The placid marble Muses^ looking peace. 

Not peace she lookM^ the Head : but rising up 
Eobed in the long night of her deep hair^ so 470 

To the open window moved, remaining there 
Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves 
Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye 
Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light 
Dash themselves dead. She stretch'd her arms and 
ealFd 475 

Across the tumult, and the tumult fell. • 

^^ What fear ye, brawlers ? am not I your Head ? 
On me, me, me, the storm first breaks : I dare 
All these male thunderbolts : what is it ye fear ? 
Peace ! there are those to avenge us and they come: 480 
H not, — myself were like enough, girls. 
To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights. 
And clad in iron burst the ranks of war. 
Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause. 
Die : yet I blame you not so much for fear ; 485 

Six thousand years of fear have made you that 
From which I would redeem you : but for those 
That stir this hubbub — you and you — I know 
Your faces there in the crowd — to-morrow morn 
We hold a great convention : then shall they 490 

That love their voices more than duty, learn 



472. a beacon-tower, a lighthouse. 

473. crimson-rolling, the revolving light. 
478. dare, defy. 

480. those, her brothers. 

484. protomartyr, the first martyr of a cause, as St. Stephen. 



THE PRINCESS 89 

With whom they deal^ dismiss^ in shame to live 

No wiser than their mothers, household stuff, 

Live chattels, mincers of each other^s fame. 

Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown 495 

The drunkard^s football, laughing-stocks of Time, 

Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels. 

But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum. 

To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour. 

For ever slaves at home and fools abroad/^ 500 

She, ending, waved her hands : thereat the crowd, 
Muttering, dissolved : then with a smile that looked 
A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff. 
When all the glens are drowned in azure gloom 
Of thunder-shower, she floated to us and said : 505 

" You have done well and like a gentleman. 
And like a prince : you have our thanks for all : 
And you look well too in your woman's dress : 
Well have you done and like a gentleman. 
You saved our life : we owe you bitter thanks : 510 

Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood — 
Then men had said — but now — What hinders me 
To take such bloody vengeance on you both ? — 
Yet since our father — Wasps in our good hive. 
You would-be quenchers of the light to be, 515 

Barbarians, grosser than your native bears — 

494. chattels, mere articles of personal property. 

495. turnspit, one who turns the spit on which a fowl is placed for 
roasting ; a cook. 

497. without any intellectual life. 
510. bitter thanks, thanks hard to give. 

510 ei seq. Her hurried and confused speech bespeaks the tumult in 
her mind. Cf. III. 190-94. 
516. Cf. III. 239. 



90 THE PRINCESS 

would I had his scepter for one hour ! 

You that have dared to break our bounds and gulFd 
Our servants, wrong'd and lied and thwarted us — 
/ wed with thee ! I bound by precontract 520 

Your bridC;, your bondslave ! not tho' all the gold 
That veins the world were pack'd to make your crown. 
And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, 
Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us : 

1 trample on your offers and on you : 525 
Begone : we will not look upon you more. 

Here, push them out at gates.^^ 

In wrath she spake. 
Then those eight mighty daughters of the plow 
Bent their broad faces toward us and addressed 
Their motion : twice I sought to plead my cause, 530 
But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands. 
The weight of destiny : so from her face 
They pushed us, down the steps, and thro^ the court. 
And with grim laughter thrust us out at gates. 

We crossed the street and gained a petty mound 535 
Beyond it, whence Ave saw the lights and heard 
The voices murmuring. While I listenM, came 
On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt : 
I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts ; 
The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, 540 
The jest and earnest working side by side. 
The cataract and the tumult and the kings 



523, Not though you should be lord of every country. 
529. addressed, directed. 

531-32. their heavy hands the weight of destiny, for a similar half- 
jocular identification compare 166 above : 

*' The weight of all the hopes of half the world." 



THE PRINCESS 91 

Were shadows ; and the long fantastic night 
With all its doings had and had not been. 
And all things were and were not. 

This went by 545 
As strangely as it came^ and on my spirits 
Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy ; 
ISTot long ; I shook it off ; for spite of doubts 
And sudden ghostly shadowings I was one 
To whom the touch of all mischance but came 550 

As night to him that, sitting on a hill 
Sees the midsunimer^ midnight^, Norway sun 
Set into sunrise ; then we moved away. 



Thy voice is heard thro* rolling drums, 

That beat to battle where he stands ; 555 

Thy face across his fancy comes, 
And gives the battle to his hands ; 

A moment, while the trumpets blow. 

He sees his brood about thy knee ; 
The next, like fire he meets the foe, 560 

And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 

So Lilia sang : we thought her half-possessM, 

She struck such warbling fury thro^ the words ; 

And, after, feigning pique at what she callM 

The raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime — 565 

552. Norway sun. Within the arctic circle there is at least one day 
in every year when the sun does not set, but is visible through the 
night. The meaning is, then, that the Prince was naturally of an 
optimistic disposition, and that his love was ever with him, making it 
impossible for anything to cause him long to despair. 

See note on first song. The present song of the power of love for 
wife and child, even to the imparting of physical strength, is con- 
trasted with the refusal of the Princess to allow love any part in her 
life. 

562. half-possess'd, half inspired. 

564. feigning pique, disliking the mock-heroic tone of the narrative 
up to this point, and asking for greater genuineness of feeling. 



92 THE PRINCESS 

Like one that wishes at a dance to change 

The music — clapt her hands and cried for war. 

Or some grand fight to kill and make an end : 

And he that next inherited the tale 

Half turning to the broken statue, said, 570 

" Sir Ealph has got your colors : if I prove 

Your knight, and fight your battle, what for me ? '^ 

It chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb 

Lay by her like a model of her hand. 

She took it and she flung it. " Fight,'^ she said, 575 

" And make us all we would be, great and good.^' 

He knightlike in his cap instead of casque, 

A cap of Tyrol borrowed from the hall. 

Arranged the favor, and assumed the Prince. 

571. Cf . Prologue, 100-5. 

578. Tyrol, a district lying north of Italy, noted for the picturesque- 
ness of the costumes of its natives. 

579. assumed. Cf. 1. 136. 



THE PRINCESS 93 



Now^ scarce three paces measured from the mound^ 

We stumbled on a stationary voice, 

And " Stand, who goes ? ^^ " Two from the palace ^^ I. 

" The second two : they wait/^ he said, '' pass on ; 

His Highness wakes : ^^ and one, that clashed in arms, 5 

By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led 

Threading the soldier-city, till we heard 

The drowsy folds of our great ensign shake 

From blazon'd lions o^er the imperial tent 

Whispers of war. 

Entering, the sudden light 10 

Dazed me half-blind : I stood and seemed to hear^ 
As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes 
A lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies. 
Each hissing in his neighbor's ear ; and then 
A strangled titter, out of which there brake 15 

On all sides, clamoring etiquette to death. 
Unmeasured mirth ; while now the two old kings 
Began to wag their baldness up and down, 
The fresh young captains flash'd their glittering teeth, 
The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved and blew, 20 
And slain with laughter roll'd the gilded Squire. 

1. The fifth speaker takes up the narrative. 

2. stationary voice, the voice of a sentinel. 

4. The second two, Cyril and Psyche were the first two. Cf. IV. 322. 

5. His Highness, the king. 

6. glimmering. See note on IV. 172. 

9. blazonM lions, lions pictured on the ensign. Cf. I. 220. 

13. innumerous, innumerable. 

21. In medieval times Squire was the name given to a young man, 
attendant upon a kn4ght, and in his service fitting himself for knight- 
hood. 



94 THE PRINCESS 

At length my Sire^ his rough cheek wet with tears. 
Panted from Aveary sides^ " King^ you are free ! 
We did but keep you surety for our son^ 
If this be he^ — or a draggled mawkin, thou, 25 

That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge :^' 
For I was drencliM with ooze, and torn with briers, 
More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath, 
And all one rag disprinced from head to heel. 
Then some one sent beneath his vaulted palm 30 

A whispered jest to some one near him, " Look, 
He has been among his shadows/^ '' Satan take 
The old women and their shadows ! (thus the King 
Eoar^d) make yourself a man to fight with men. 
Go : Cyril told us all/^ 

As boys that slink 35 

From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye. 
Away we stole, and transient in a trice 
From what was left of faded woman-slough 
To sheathing splendors and the golden scale 
Of harness, issued in the sun, that now 40 

Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, 
And hit the ISTorthern hills. Here Cj^il met us. 
A little shy at first, but by and by 
We twain, with mutual pardon ask'd and given 
For stroke and song, resoldei-^d peace, whereon 45 

Follow'd his tale. Amazed he fled away 

25. mawkin, the diminutive of Mary (Mary-kin) ; a scuUery-maid. 

26. sludge, mire. 

28. from the sheath, when it has just blossomed. 

29. disprinced. Cf. *' disUnk'd," Prologue, 70. 

37. transient, passing. 

38. Slough, the skin thrown off by a snake. 
40. harness, armor. 

45. resolder'd, made solid again. 



THE PRINCESS . 95 

Thro^ the dark land^ and later in the night 
Had come on Psyche weeping : " then we fell 
Into your father's hand^ and there she lies^ 
But will not speak^ nor stir/^ 

He showed a tent 50 

A stone-shot off : we entered in^ and there 
Among piled arms and rough accoutrements, 
Pitiful sight;, wrapped in a soldier's cloak. 
Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot, 
And pushed by rude hands from, its pedestal, 55 

All her fair length upon the ground she lay : 
And at her head a follower of the camp, 
A charr'd and wrinkled piece of wom_anhood, 
Sat watching like a watcher by the dead. 

Then Florian knelt, and '' Come '^ he whispered to 
her, 60 

^^ Lift up your head, sweet sister : lie not thus. 
What have you done but right ? you could not slay 
Me, nor your prince : look up : be. comforted : 
Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought. 
When falFn in darker ways.'^ And likewise I : 65 

" Be comforted : have I not lost her too. 
In whose least act abides the nameless charm 
That none has else for me ? '^ She heard, she moved, 
She moanM, a folded voice ; and up she sat. 
And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth 70 
As those that mourn half-shrouded over death 



64-65 It is a comfort in misfortune to know that one has acted 
rightly. 

71. those that mourn, the marble figures of angels often carved over 
tombs. 



96 THE PRINCESS 

In deathless marble. ^^ Her/^ she said, ^^ my friend — 

Parted from her — betray'd her cause and mine — 

Where shall I breathe ? why kept ye not yonr faith ? 

base and bad ! what comfort ? none for me ! ^^ 75 

To whom remorseful Cyril, '' Yet I pray 

Take comfort : live, dear lady, for your child ! ^^ 

At which she lifted up her voice and cried. 

'' Ah me, by babe, my blossom, ah, my child, 
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more ! 80 

For now will cruel Ida keep her back ; 
And either she will die from want of care. 
Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say 
The child is hers — for every little fault. 
The child is hers ; and they will beat my girl 85 

Eemembering. her mother : my flower ! 
Or they will take her, they will make her hard, 
And she will pass me by in after-life 
With some cold reverence worse than were she dead. 
Ill mother that I was to leave her there, 90 

To lag behind, scared by the cry they made, 
The horror of the shame among them all : 
But I will go and sit beside the doors. 
And make a wild petition night and day. 
Until they hate to hear me like a wind 95 

Wailing for ever, till they open to me, 
And lay my little blossom at my feet, 
My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child : 



74. your faith, referring to the promise (II. 275-80; to leave the coUege 
as soon as possible. 
90. ill, wicked. Cf . Henry IV., Pt. 2, 1, ii. 162 : 

" You foUow the young prince up and down like his ill angel." 



THE PRINCESS 97 

And I will take her up and go my way, 

And satisfy my soul with kissing her : 100 

Ah ! what might that man not deserve of me 

Who gave me back my child ? ^^ " Be comforted/^ 

Said Cyril, '^ you shall have it v^ but again 

She veil'd her brows, and prone she sank, and so 

Like tender things that being caught feign death, 105 

Spoke not, nor stirr'd. 

By this a murmur ran 
Thro^ all the camp and inward raced the scouts 
With rumor of Prince Arac hard at hand. 
We left her by the woman, and without 
Found the gray kings at parle : and " Look you,^^ cried 
My father, " that our compact be fulfilFd : 111 

You have spoilt this child ; she laughs at you and man : 
She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him : 
But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire ; 
She yields, or war/^ 

Then Gama turned to me : 115 

" We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time 
With our strange girl : and yet they say that still 
You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large : 
How say you, war or not ? ^^ 

'' Not war, if possible, 
king,^^ I said, '^ lest from the abuse of war, 120 

The desecrated shrine, the trampled year. 
The smouldering homestead, and the household flower 
Torn from the lintel — all the common wrong — 
A smoke go up thro' which I loom to her 



110. parle, parley, discussion. 
131. year, harvest. 



98 THE PRINCESS 

Three times a monster : now she lightens scorn 125 

A.t him that mars her plan^ but then would hate 

(And every voice she talked with ratify it, 

And every face she looked on justify it) 

The general foe. More soluble is this knot. 

By gentleness than war. I Avant her love. 130 

What were I nigher this altho^ we dash'd 

Your cities into shards with catapults. 

She would not love ; — or brought her chain'd, a slave. 

The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord, 

Not ever would she love ; but brooding turn 135 

The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance 

Were caught within the record of her wrongs. 

And crushM to death : and rather. Sire, than this 

I would the old God of war himself were dead. 

Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, 140 

Eotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck. 

Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice, 

Not to be molten out.'^ 

And roughly spake 
My father, ^'^ Tut, you know them not, the girls. 
Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think 145 

That idiot legend credible. Look you. Sir ! 
Man is the hunter ; woman is his game : 
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase. 
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins ; 



133. shards, fragments, catapults, machines for hurling missiles. 

134. By the lifting of whose eyelash I am ruled. 

136. the book of scorn, the mental record of her wrongs. 
139. the old God of war, in Latin mythology. Mars. 

141. with ribs of wreck, like the framework of a wrecked vessel. 

142. mammoth, a huge animal of the prehistoric age, specimens of 
which have been found in Siberia enclosed in ice-banks. 

146. idiot legend. Cf. I. 5. 



THE PRINCESS 99 

They love us for it^ and we ride them down. 150 

Wheedling and siding with them ! Out ! for shame ! 

Boy, there^s no rose that^s half so dear to them 

As he that does the thing they dare not do, 

Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes 

With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in 155 

Among the women, snares them by the score 

Flattered and flustered, w4ns, tho' dashed with death 

He reddens what he kisses : thus I won 

Your mother, a good mother, a good wife. 

Worth winning ; but this firebrand — gentleness 160 

To such as her 1 if Cyril spake her true. 

To catch a dragon in a cherry net. 

To trip a tigress with a gossamer. 

Were wisdom to it/^ 

" Yea but Sire,^^ I cried, 
'' Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier ? No : 
What dares not Ida do that she should prize 166 

The soldier ? I beheld her, when she rose 
The yesternight, and storming in extremes, 
Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down 
Gagelike to man, and had not shunn'd the death, 170 
No, not the soldier^s : yet I hold her. King, 
True woman : but you clash them all in one, 
That have as many differences as we. 
The violet varies from the lily as far 



152-158. Cf . OfheXlQ : 

*' She loved me for the dangers I had passed." 
157. dashed with death, red with blood. 

163. cherry net, a net placed over cherry-trees to protect the fruit 
from birds. 
163. gossamer, a light cobweb. 
166. In answer to 153. 
170. shunn'd the death. Cf. IV. 148-9. 



100 THE PRINCESS 

As oak from elm : one loves the soldier, one 175 

The silken priest of peace, one this, one that, 
And some unworthily ; their sinless faith, 
A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty. 
Glorifying clown and satyr ; whence they need 
More breadth of culture : is not Ida right ? 180 

They worth it ? truer to the law within ? 
Severer in the logic of a life ? 
Twice as magnetic to sweet influences 
Of earth and heaven ? and she of whom you speak, 
My mother, looks as whole as some serene 185 

<]reation minted in the golden moods 
Of sovereign artists ; not a thought, a touch. 
But pure as lines of green that streak the white 
Of the first snowdrop^s inner leaves ; I say. 
Not like the piebald miscellany, man, 190 

Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire. 
But whole and one : and take them all-in-all. 
Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind. 
As truthful, much that Ida claims as right 
Had ne^er been mooted, but as frankly theirs 195 

As dues of Nature. To our point : not war : 
Lest I lose slW 

Nay, nay, you spake but sense,^^ 
Said Gama. ^^ We remember love ourself 
In our sweet youth ; we did not rate him then 
This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows. 200 

179. satyr, a mythological being, half man and half goat : here, a 
brutal man. 
181. truer to the law within, governed by conscience. 
183. magnetic, susceptible to. 
186. golden. Cf. note on IV. 400. 
191. great heart, good impulse. 
195. mooted, disputed. 



THE PRINCESS 101 

You talk almost like Ida : she can talk ; 

And there is something in it as you say : 

But j''ou talk kindlier : we esteem you for it. — 

He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince, 

I would he had our daughter : for the rest, .305 

Our own detention, why, the causes weighed, 

Fatherly fears — you used us courteously — 

We would do much to gratify your Prince — 

We pardon it ; and for your ingress here 

Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, 210 

You did but come as goblins in the night, 

Nor in the furrow broke the plowman^s head, 

Nor burnt the grange, nor bussed the milking-maid, 

Nor robbed the farmer of his bowl of cream : 

But let your Prince (our royal word upon it, 215 

He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines. 

And speak with Arac : Arac^s word is thrice 

As ours with Ida : something may be done — 

I know not what — and ours shall see us friends. 

You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will, 220 

Follow us : who knows ? we four may build some plan 

Foursquare to opposition. ^^ 

Here he reached 
White hands of farewell to my sire, who growl'd 
An answer which, half-muffled in his beard. 
Let so much out as gave us leave to go. 225 

204. Here Gama addresses himself to the king. 

211. goblins, fairies friendly to men, that were believed to come in 
the night to help men in their work and to depart before sunrise- 
213. grange. See note on I. 109. bussM, kissed. 

219. ours, onr party. 

220. you, Florian and Cyril. 

222. foursquare. Cf . Ode on the Death of the ThiUe of WrlJinoton, 39 : 

'' That tower of strength 
Which stood foursquare to all the winds that blew." 



102 THE PRINCESS 

Then rode we with the old king across the lawns 
Beneath hnge trees^ a thousand rings of Spring 
In every bole^ a song on every spray 
Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke 
Desire in me to infuse my tale of love 230 

In tlie old king's ears^ who promised help, and oozed 
All o'er with honey'd answer as we rode 
And blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews 
Gathered by night and peace, with each light air 
On our mail'd heads : but other thoughts than Peace 
Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares, 236 
And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers 
With clamor : for among them rose a cry 
As if to greet the king ; they made a halt ; 
The horses yell'd ; they clash'd their arms ; the drum 
Beat ; merrily-blowing shrilFd the martial fife ; 241 
x\nd in the blast and bray of the long horn 
And serpent-throated bugle, undulated 
The banner : anon to meet us lightly pranced 
Three captains out ; nor ever had I seen 245 

Such thews of men : the midmost and the highest 
Was Arac : all about his motion clung 
The shadow of his sister, as the beam 
Of the East, that play'd upon them, made them glance 
Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone, 250 

That glitter burnish'd by the frosty dark ; 



229 Valentines, love-songs 

234. by night and peace. For figure, see note on Prologue, 56. 

246. Such thews of men; thews, muscles and sinews. The expres- 
sion means, then, " such muscular men." 

247-48. A resemblance existed between the Princess and Arac. 

250 the airy Giant's zone. The bright stars in the constellation 
named after Orion, the giant hunter of Boeotia, are called his *' belt." 
Orion is brightest in England during the winter months. 



THE PRINCESS 103 

And as the fiery Sirius alters hue^ 

And bickers into red and emerald^ shone 

Their morions^ washed with morning, as they came. 

And I that prated peace, when first I heard 255 

War-mnsic, felt the blind wildbeast of force. 
Whose home is in the sinews of a man. 
Stir in me as to strike : then took the king 
His three broad sons ; with now a wandering hand 
And now a pointed finger, told them all : 260 

A common light of smiles at our disguise 
Broke from their lips, and, ere the windy jest 
Had labored down within his ample lungs. 
The genial giant, Arac, roU'd himself 
Thrice in the saddle, then burst out in words. 265 

'^ Our land invaded, ^sdeath ! and he himself 
Your captive, yet my father wills not war : 
And, ^sdeath ! myself, what care I, war or no ? 
But then this question of your troth remains : - 
And there^s a downright honest meaning in her ; 270 
She flies too high, she flies too high ! and yet 
She ask'd but space and fairplay for her scheme ; 
She prest and prest it on me — I myself, 
What know I of these things ? but, life and soul ! 
I thought her half -right talking of her wrongs ; 275 
I say she flies too high, ^sdeath ! what of that ? 
1 take her for the flower of womankind, 

252. Sirius, the dog star, when low down in the sky frequently 
"alters hue." 

254. morions, helmets. 

266. 'sdeath ! , a contraction of " God's death,'' an old oath. Cf. 
"zounds" (" God's wounds"). 

269. troth, betrothal. 



104 THE PRINCESS 

And so I often told her^ right or wrong, 

And, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves, 

And, right or wrong, I care not : this is all, 280 

I stand upon her side : she made me swear it — 

^Sdeath — and with solemn rites by candle-light — 

Swear by St. something — I forget her name — 

Her that talk'd down the fifty wisest men ; 

She was a princess too ; and so I swore. 285 

Come, this is all ; she will not : waive your claim : 

If not, the foughten field, what else, at once 

Decides it, ^sdeath ! against my father's will.'^ 

I lagged in answer loth to render up 
My precontract, and loth by brainless war 290 

To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet ; 
Till one of those two brothers, half aside 
And fingering at the hair above his lip, 
To prick us on to combat, '^ Like to like ! 
The woman's garment hid the woman's heart." 295 
A taunt that clench'd his purpose like a blow ! 
For fiery-short was Cjrril's counter-scoff. 
And sharp I answer'd, touch'd upon the point 
Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 
" Decide it here : why not ? we are three to three." 300 

Then spake the third, " But three to three ? no more ? 
No more, and in our noble sister's cause ? 

284. St. Catharine of Alexandria, a legendary saint who converted 
to Christianity the fifty wise men sent by the Emperor Maximin to 
win her over from the faith. 

285. She was a princess too. St Catherine was a daughter of Costus, 
half-brother of the Emperor Constantine and of Sabinella, the Queen 
of Egypt. 

299. Cowards to their shame, afraid to undergo the imputation of 
physical cowardice that they would undergo by not fighting. 



THE PRINCESS 105 

More^ more^, for honor : every captain waits 

Hungry for honor, angry for his king. 

More, more, some fifty on a side, that each 305 

May breathe himself, and quick ! by overthrow 

Of these or those, the question settled die/^ 

'' Yea,'^ answer'd I, "^^ for this wild wreath of air, 
This flake of rainbow flying on the highest 
Foam of men^s deeds — this honor, if ye will. 310 

It needs must be for honor if at all : 
Since, what decision ? if we fail, we fail. 
And if we win, we^ fail : she would not keep 
Her compact.^^ "^ ^Sdeath ! but we will send to her,^^ 
Said Arac, " worthy reasons why she should 315 

Bide by this issue : let our missive thro^. 
And you shall have her answer by the word.^^ 

'' Boys ! ^^ shrieked the old king, but vainlier than a 
hen 
To her false daughters in the pool ; for none 
Eegarded ; neither seemed there more to say : 320 

Back rode we to my father^s camp, and found 
He thrice had sent a herald to the gates. 
To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim. 
Or by denial flush her babbling wells 
With her own people^s life : three times he went : 325 
The first, he blew and blew, but none appeared : 

306. breath, take violent exercise. Cf. Prologue, 113. 
308. wild wreath of air. Cf. Henry TV , Pt. 1, V. i. 134-5: 

*' What is honor ? A word. What is that word honor? Air." 

316. Bide by this issue, act according to the result of the fight. 

317. by the word, in her very words. 

319. false daughters, ducks that the hen has hatched. 

323. cede, allow. 

324. flush, to fill full, and to stain with red ; a blended meaning. 



106 THE PRINCESS 

He battered at the doors ; none came : the next, 

An awful voice within had warn'd him thence : 

The thirds and those eight daughters of the plow 

Came sallying thro^ the gates, and caught his hair, 

And so belabored him on rib and cheek 331 

They made him wild : not less one glance he caught 

Thro^ open doors of Ida stationed there 

Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm 

Tho^ compass'd by two armies and the noise 335 

Of arms ; and standing like a stately Pine 

Set in a cataract on an island-crag, 

When storm is on the heights, and right and left 

Sucked from the dark heart of the long hills roll 

The torrents, dashed to the vale : and yet her will 340 

Bred will in me to overcome it or fall. 

But when I told the king that I was pledged 
To fight in tourney for my bride, he clashed 
His iron palms together with a cry ; 
Himself would tilt it out among the lads : 345 

But overborne by all his bearded lords 
With reasons drawn from age and state, perforce 
He yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur : 
And many a bold knight started up in heat. 
And sware to combat for my claim till death. 350 

All on this side the palace ran the field 
Flat to the garden-wall ; and likewise here, 
Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts, 

336. a stately Pine. Cf IV. 472-5. 
344. iron palms, hands enclosed in iron gauntlets. 
347. age and state, his time of life and the important position he 
occupied. 



THE PRINCESS 107 

A columned entry shone and marble stairs^ 

And great bronze valves^, embossed with Tomyris 355 

And what she did to Cyrus after fight;, 

But now fast barr'd : so here upon the flat 

All that long morn the lists were hammered up, 

And all that morn the heralds to and fro. 

With message and defiance, went and came ; 360 

Last, Ida^s answer, in a royal hand. 

But shaken here and there, and rolling words 

Oration-like. I kiss'd it and I read. 

'^ brother, you have known the pangs we felt. 
What heats of indignation when we heard 365 

Of those that iron-cramped their women's feet : 
Of lands in which at the altar the poor bride 
Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge ; 
Of living hearts that crack within the fire 
Where smoulder their dead despots ; and of those, — 
Mothers, — that, all prophetic pity, fling 371 

Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops 
The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart 
Made for all noble motion : and I saw 
That equal baseness lived in sleeker times 375 



355. embossM, see note on II., 10. Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae, 
against whom Cyrus carried on an expedition, purely for the sake of 
conquest. He was defeated and killed on the field (529 B.C.), and 
Tomyris, taking his head, dipped it in a skin of blood, saying that 
since he was so thirsty for blood he might here drink his fill. 

358. the lists, the enclosure with the seats for spectators, etc. 

366. those . . . feet. See note on II. 118. 

367. lands, the reference is to a Russian marriage custom. 

369 living hearts, the reference is to the Hindoo custom of burning 
widows on the funeral piles of their dead husbands. 

371. prophetic pity, fearing that their daughters would live to be 
dishonored by failing to marry before a certain age. 

373. flood, the Ganges, the sacred river of the Hindus. 



108 THE PRINCESS 

With smoother men : the old leaven leavened all : 

Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights, 

No woman named : therefore I set my face 

Against all men, and lived but for mine own. 

Far off from men I built a fold for them : 380 

I stored it full of rich memorial : 

I fenced it round with gallant institutes, 

And biting laws to scare the beasts of prey, 

x\nd prospered ; till a rout of saucy boys 

Brake on us at our books, and marr'd our peace ; 385 

Masked like our maids, blustering I know not Avhat 

Of insolence and love, some pretext held 

Of baby troth, invalid, since my will 

SeaFd not the bond — the striplings ! — for their sport ! — 

I tamed my leopards : shall I not tame these ? 390 

Or you ? or I ? for since you think me touched 

In honor — what, I would not aught of false — 

Is not our cause pure ? and whereas I know 

Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's blood 

You draw from, fight ; you failing, I abide 395 

What end soever : fail you will not. Still 

Take not his life : he risked it for my own ; 

His mother lives : yet whatsoe'er you do. 

Fight and fight well ; strike and strike home. dear 

Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you, you 400 

The sole men to be mingled with our cause, 



376. the old leaven, the old belief that woman is inferior to man. 

381. memorial, commemorative paintings, statues, etc. 

383. gallant institutes, a magnificent curriculum and code of regu- 
lations. 

388. invalid, null and void. 

392. I would not aught of false, I wish to realize my real situation, 
whatever it may be. 

400 the woman's Angel. Cf. I. 307. 



THE PRINCESS 109 

The sole men we shall prize in the af tertime^ 

Your very armor hallow'd, and your statues 

Eear^d^ sung to^ when, this gadfly brushed aside, 

We plant a solid foot into the Time, 405 

And mold a generation strong to move 

With claim on claim from right to right, till she 

Whose name is yoked with children's, know herself ; 

And Knowledge in our own land made her free, 

And, ever following those two crowned twins, 410 

Commerce and conquest, shower the fiery grain 

Of freedom broadcast over all that orbs 

Between the Northern and the Southern morn/' 

Then came a postscript dash'd across the rest. 
^^ See that there be no traitors in your camp : 415 

We seem a nest of traitors — none to trust 
Since our arms faiFd — this Egypt-plague of men ! 
Almost our maids were better at their homes. 
Than thus man-girdled here : indeed I think 
Our chiefest comfort is the little child 420 

Of one unworthy mother ; which she left : 
She shall not have it back : the child shall grow 
To prize the authentic mother of her mind. 
I took it for an hour in mine own bed 
This morning : there the tender orphan hands 425 



404. this gadfly, this trifling hindrance. 

408. She whose name is yoked with children, woman, who is con- 
sidered as having no higher sphere than as a child's nurse. 

411. Commerce and conquest, the two chief agencies in the dissemi- 
nation of "the grain of freedom," from which springs civilization. 

412. all that orbs, etc , all countries that lie between the poles of this 
orb of earth. 

417. this Egypt-Dlague. The reference is to the plagues that God sent 
upon the Egpytians as punishment for the refusal of Pharoah to let 
the Israelites go. These plagues sometimes took the form of locusts, 
frogs, etc. Cf. Exodus^ viii.-x. 



110 THE PRINCESS 

Felt at my hearty and seem'd to charm from thence 
The wrath I nursed against the world : farewell/^ 

I ceased ; he said^ " Stubborn^ but she may sit 
Upon a king^s right hand in thunderstorms^, 
And breed up warriors ! See now^, tho^ yourself 430 
Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs 
That swallow common sense, the spindling king, 
This Gama swamp'd in lazy tolerance. 
When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up, 
And topples down the scales ; but this is fixt 435 

As are the roots of earth and base of all ; 
Man for the field and woman for the hearth : 
Man for the sword and for the needle she : 
Man with the head and woman with the heart : 
Man to command and woman to obey ; 440 

And else confusion. Look you ! the gray mare 
Is ill to live with when her whinny shrills 
From tile to scullery, and her small goodman 
Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell 
Mix with his hearth : but you — she^s yet a colt — 445 
Take, break her : strongly groom'd and straitly curFd 
She might not rank with those detestable 
That let the bantling scald at home, and bawl 
Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street. 
They say she's comely ; there's the fairer chance : 450 
I like her none the less for rating at her ! 

431. Cf. lY. 399, note. 

441. the gray mare. The reference is to the proverb, " the gray mare 
is the better horse," alluding to a wife who is the real head of the 
house. 

443. tile to scullery, roof to cellar. 

447. those detestable, supply ones, 

448. bantling, infant. 

449. potherbs, vegetables. 



THE PRINCESS 111 

Besides^, the woman wed is not as we^ 

But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace 

Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, 

The bearing and the training of a child 455 

Is woman's wisdom. '^ 

Thus the hard old king : 
I took my leave, for it was nearly noon : 
I pored upon her letter which I held, 
And on the little clause '' take not his life ; '^ 
I mused on that wild morning in the woods, 460 

And on the '' Follow, follow, thou shalt win '^ 
I thought on all the wrathful king had said. 
And how the strange betrothment was to end : 
Then I remembered that burnt sorcerer's curse 
That one should fight with shadows and should fall ; 
And like a flash the weird affection came : 466 

King, camp, and college turned to hollow shows ; 
I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts. 
And doing battle with forgotten ghosts 
To dream myself the shadow of a dream ; 470 

And ere I woke it was the point of noon. 
The lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumed 
We entered in, and waited, fifty there 
Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared 
At the barrier like a wild horn in a land 475 

Of echoes, and a moment, and once more 
The trumpet, and again : at which the storm 
Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears 

456. woman's wisdom, woman's best use. 

460 that \A^ild morning, see I. 96-9. 

464. curse. Cf. I. 10, 

472. Empanoplied, in fuU armor. 

478. bare on, carried, along. 



112 THE PEINCESS 

And riders front to front, until they closed 

In conflict with the crash of shivering points, 480 

And thunder. Yet it seemed a dream, I dream'd 

Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed, 

And into fiery splinters leapt the lance. 

And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. 

Part sat like rocks : part reel'd but kept their seats : 

Part rolFd on the earth and rose again and drew : 486 

Part stumbled mixt with floundering horses. Down 

From those two bulks at Arac's side, and down 

From Arac^s arm, as from a giant^s flail. 

The large blows rain'd, as here and everywhere 490 

He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists. 

And all the plain, — brand, mace, and shaft, and 

shield — 
Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil bang'd 
With hammers ; till I thought, can this be he 
From Gama^s dwarfish loins ? if this be so, 495 

The mother makes us most — and in my dream 
I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front 
Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes, 
And highest, among the statues, statue-like, 
Between a cymbaFd Miriam and a Jael, 500 

With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us, 
A single band of gold about her hair. 
Like a Saint's glory up in heaven : but she 



486 drew, their swords. 

488. those two bulks, Arac's brothers. 

491. mellay, from the French melee, the confusion and tumult of 
battle. 

500. Miriam, the sister of Moses, who sang the Song of Triumph over 
Pharoah. Cf Exodus, xv. 20, 21. Jael, a Jewish heroine, who killed 
the oppressor, Sisera, by driving a nail through his temples while he 
slept. 



THE PRINCESS 113 

'No saint — inexorable — no tenderness — 

Too hard, too cruel : yet she sees me fight, 505 

Yea, let her see me fall ! with that I drave 

Among the thickest and bore down a Prince, 

And Cyril, one. Yea, let me make my dream 

All that I would. But that large-moulded man. 

His visage all agrin as at a wake, 510 

Made at me thro^ the press, and, staggering back 

With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came 

As comes a pillar of electric cloud. 

Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains. 

And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes 515 

On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and 

splits. 
And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth 
Eeels, and the herdsmen cry ; for everything 
Gave way before him : only Florian, he 
That loved me closer than his own right eye, 520 

Thrust in between ; but Arac rode him down : 
And Cyril seeing it, pushed against the Prince, 
With Psyche^s color round his helmet, tough. 
Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms ; 
But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote 535 

And threw him : last I spurred ; I felt my veins 
Stretch with fierce heat ; a moment hand to hand. 
And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung, 
Till I struck out and shouted ; the blade glanced, 
I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth 530 

Flow'd from me ; darkness closed me ; and I fell. 

509. that large-moulded man, Arac. 

510. a wake, a merry-making. 

515. shadowing down, shutting off the light of the sun in its course. 
530. dream ^nd trqtl) flpvyed from me, I became totaUy unconscious. 



114 THE PRINCESS 



VI 



Home they brought her warrior dead . 

She nor swoon 'd, nor utter'd cry : 
All her maidens, watching, said, 

" She must weep or she will die." 

Then they praised him, soft and low, 

Caird him worthy to be loved, 
Truest friend and noblest foe ; 

Yet she neither spoke nor moved. 

Stole a maiden from her place, 

Lightly to the warrior stept, 
Took the face-cloth from the face; 

Yet she neither moved nor wept. 

Rose a nurse of ninety years, 

Set his child upon her knee — 
Like summer tempest * came her tears — 

" Sweet my child, I live for thee." 

My dream had never died or lived again. 

As in some mystic middle state I lay ; 

Seeing I saw not^ hearing not I heard : 

Tho^ if I saw not, yet they told me all 

So often that I speak as having seen. 5 

For so it seemM;, or so they said to me, 
That all things grew more tragic and more strange ; 

See note on first song. The central theme of this song is the power 
of love for one's child as an inspiration and influence in daily life, as 
that of the last song was the power of love as the inspiration of the 
action of a moment. This glorification of the maternal instinct is in 
constant contrast with the Princess's disregard and almost scorn of 
love as a moving force in life. 

* Like summer tempest, because suddenly and unexpectedly. 

1. The sixth speaker here takes up the narrative. 

My dream . . . , again, either my dream survived the shock of un- 
consciousness, or returned after an interval, 



THE PRINCESS . 115 

That when our side was vanquished and my cause 

For ever lost^ there went up a great cry. 

The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran 10 

In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque 

And grovcFd on my body, and after him 

Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaia. 

But high upon the palace Ida stood 
With Psyche^s babe in arm : there on the roofs 15 
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang. 

*'Our enemies have faU'ri, have fall'ii : the seed, 
The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark, 
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk 
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side 20 

A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun. 

*'Our enemies have fall'n, have fallen : they came ; 
The leaves were wet with women's tears : they heard 
A noise of songs they would not understand : 
They mark'd it with the red cross to the fall, 25 

And would have strown it, and are fall'n themselves. 

" Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n : they came, 
The woodmen with their axes : lo, the tree ! 
But we will make it faggots foi* the hearth, 
And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor, 30 

And boats and bridges for the use of men. 

*' Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n : they struck ; 
With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew 
There dwelt an iron nature in the grain : 
The glittering axe was broken in their arms, 35 

Their arms were shatter'd to the shoulder-blade. 

16. great dame of Lapidoth, Deborah, who sang a song of triumph 
over the dead Sisera Of. Judgex^ iv.- v., and note on '' Jael," V. 5(X). 

17. This song compares the College, or, in a larger sense, the cause of 
woman, to a tree 

21. to the Sun. Cf 111. ;J27. 

25. the red cross. Tills, marked on a tree, was the symbol of destruc- 
tion. 



116 THE PRINCESS 

" Our enemies have fall'ii, but this shall grow 
A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth 
Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power : and roU'd 
With music in the growing breeze of Time, 40 

The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs 
Shall move the stony bases of the world. 

^^And now, maids/ behold our sanctuary- 
Is violate, our laws broken : fear we not 
To break them more in their behoof, whose arms 45 
Chajnpion'd our cause and won it with a day 
Blanched in our annals, and perpetual feast, 
When dames and heroines of the golden year 
Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring, 
To rain an April of ovation round 50 

Their statues, borne aloft, the three : but come. 
We will be liberal, since our rights are won. 
Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind, 
111 nurses; but descend, and proffer these 
The brethren of our blood and cause, that there 55 
Lie bruised and maim'd, the tender ministries 
Of female hands and hospitality/^ 

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms. 
Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led 
A hundred maids in train across the Park. 60 

Some cowFd, and some bareheaded, on they came. 
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest : by them went 
The enamor'd air sighing, and on their curls 
I rom the high tree the blossom wavering fell, 

38. A night of Summer, protection from the heat of summer, a 
breadth of Autumn, a mighty harvest. 
41. fangs, roots. 

47. Blanch'd, marked with white. Cf. the expression *' to mark with 
a white stone." 

48. golden. See note on IV. 400. 

49. Spring, spring blossoms. 

50. April, the month of showers. 



THE PEINCESS 117 

And over them the tremulous isles of light 65 

Slided^ they moving under shade : but Blanche 

At distance followed : so they came : anon 

Thro^ open field into the lists they wound 

Timorously ; and as the leader of the herd 

That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun, 70 

And followM up by a hundred airy does. 

Steps with a tender foot, light as on air. 

The lovely, lordly creature floated on 

To where her wounded brethren lay ; there stay'd ; 

Knelt on one knee, — the child on one, — and prest 75 

Their hands and calFd them dear deliverers. 

And happy warriors, and immortal names. 

And said, " You shall not lie in the tents but here. 

And nursed by those for whom you fought, and served 

With female hands and hospitality/^ 80 

Then, whether moved by this, or was it chance. 
She past my way. Up started from my side 
The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye. 
Silent ; but when she saw me lying stark, 
Dishelm^d and mute, and motionlessly pale, 85 

Cold ev^n to her, she sighed ; and when she saw 
The haggard father^s face and reverend beard 
Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood 
Of his own son, shudder'd, a twitch of pain 
Tortured her mouth, and o'er her forehead past 90 
A shadow, and her hue changed, and she said : 
'^ He saved my life : my brother slew him for it/^ 
No more : at which the king in bitter scorn 

65. isles of light, the sunlight rifted through the leaves. 
70. fretwork, the pattern formed by the deer's antlers. See note on 
IV. 185. 
81. this, her sympathy for the wounded. 
83. The old lion, the father of the Prince. 



118 THE PRINCESS 

Drew from my neck the painting and the tress, 

And held them up : she saw them, and a day 

Eose from the distance on her memory, 

When the good Queen, her mother, shore the tress 

With kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche : 

And then once more she look'd at my pale face : 

Till understanding all the foolish work 100 

Of Fancy, and the bitter close of all, 

Her iron will was broken in her mind ; 

Her noble heart was molten in her breast ; 

She bowM, she set the child on the earth ; she laid 

A feeling finger on my brows, and presently 105 

" Sire,^^ she said, " he lives : he is not dead : 

let me have him with my brethren here 

In our own palace : we will tend on him 

Like one of these ; if so, by any means. 

To lighten this great clog of thanks, that make 110 

Our progress falter to the woman^s goal/^ 

She said : but at the happy word " he lives ^^ 
My father stoop'd, re-father^d o'er my wounds. 
So those two foes above my fallen life. 
With brow to brow like night and evening mixt 115 
Their dark and gray, while Psyche ever stole 
A little nearer, till the babe that by us, 
Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede. 
Lay like a new-falFn meteor on the grass, 

94 the painting and the tress. Cf . I. 37-38. 

101. Fancy, her fanciful ideas. 

110-111 The feelinp: of dependence on man, which her gratitude to the 
Prince for saving her life and to her brothers for their support implies, 
have caused the Princess's faith in the certainty of progress to "the 
woman's goal '' to falter. 

118. brede, embroidery. 

119. meteor. See note on '* headed like a star," II. 94. 




THE PRINCESS 119 

Uncared for^ spied its mother and began 120 

A blind and babbling laughter^ and to dance 

Its body^ and reach its fatling innocent arms 

And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal 

Brook'd not, but clamoring out " Mine — mine — not 

yours, 
It is not yours, but mine : give me the child '^ 125 

Ceased all on tremble : piteous was the cry : 
So stood the unhappy mother open-mouthed, 
And turned each face her way : wan was her cheek 
With hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn, 
Eed grief and mother's hunger in her eye, 130 

And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and half 
The sacred mother's bosom, panting, burst 
The laces toward her babe ; but she nor cared 
Nor knew it, clamoring on, till Ida heard. 
Looked up, and rising slowly from me, stood 135 

Erect and silent, striking with her glance 
The mother, me, the child ; but he that lay 
Beside us, Cyril, battered as he was. 
Trailed himself up on one knee : then he drew 
Her robe to meet his lips, and down she looked 140 

At the arm'd man sideways, pitying as it seem'd. 
Or self -involved ; but when she learnt his face, 
Eemembering his ill-omen'd song, arose 
Once more thro' all her height, and o'er him grew 
Tall as a figure lengthen'd on the sand 145 

When the tide ebbs in sunshine, and he said : 

122. fatling, a word combining the idea of ** fat '' and " Uttle." 
124. Brook'd, withstood. 

130. Red grief, grief that makes red the eyes with weeping 
142. self-involved, wrapt in her own thoughts. 

145. Tall. Cf . Prologue, 40. Shadows on wet sand are greatly length- 
ened by the reflection of the sun's rays. 



120 THE PRINCESS 

^^ fair and strong and terrible ! Lioness 
That with your long locks play the lion^s mane ! 
But Love and Nature^ these are two more terrible 
And stronger. See^ your foot is on our necks, 150 
We vanquished, you the Victor of your will. 
What would you more ? give her the child ! remain 
OrVd in your isolation : he is dead. 
Or all as dead : henceforth we let you be : 
Win you the hearts of women ; and beware 155 

Lest, where you seek the common love of these. 
The common hate with the revolving wheel 
Should drag you down, and some great Xemesis 
Break from a darkened future, crowned with fire, 
And tread you out for ever : but howsoever 160 

Fix^d in yourself, never in your own arms 
To hold your own, deny not hers to her. 
Give her the child ! if, I say, you keep 
One pulse that beats true woman, if you loved 
The breast that fed or arm that dandled you, 165 

Or own one port of sense not flint to prayer, 
Give her the child ! or if you scorn to lay it, 
Yourself, in hands so lately claspt with yours, 
Or speak to her, your dearest, her one fault 
The tenderness, not yours, that could not kill, 170 
Give me it : I will give it her.^^ 

He said : 
At first her eye with slow dilation rolFd 

148. play the lion's mane, assume the character of the male. 
153 Orb'd. See note on IV. 129. 

156. common, universal. 

157. the revolving wheel, the wheel of Fate. 

158. Nemesis, in Greek mythology the goddess of retribution and 
moral justice 

166 port, portal. 



THE PRINCESS 121 

Dry flame^ she listening ; after sank and sank 

And;, into mournful twilight mellowing^ dwelt 

Full on the child ; she took it : " Pretty bud ! 175 

Lily of the vale ! half-opened bell of the woods ! 

Sole comfort of my dark hour^ when a world 

Of traitorous friend and broken system made 

No purple in the distance^ mystery^ 

Pledge of a love not to be mine, farewell ; 180 

These men are hard upon us as of old. 

We two must part : and yet how fain was I 

To dream thy caus.e embraced in mine, to think 

I might be something to thee, when 1 felt 

Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast 185 

In the dead prime : but may thy mother prove 

As true to thee as false, false, false to me ! 

And, if thou needs must bear the yoke, I wish it 

Gentle as freedom ^^ — here she kiss'd it : then — 

^' All good go with thee ! take it, Sir,'^ and so 190 

Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailed hands. 

Who turned half-round to Psyche as she sprang 

To meet it, with an eye that swum in thanks ; 

Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot, 

And huggM and never hugg'd it close enough, 195 

And in her hunger mouthed and mumbled it, 

And hid her bosom with it ; after that 

Put on more calm and added suppliantly : 

" We two were friends : I go to mine own land 

173. Dry, tearless. 

179. No purple, with nothing of the rose-color of hope. 

180. a love not to be mine, the love of wife and mother. 
186. prime, early dawn. 

193. swum in thanks, flooded with thankful tears. 



122 THE PRINCESS 

For ever : find some other : as for me 200 

I scarce am fit for your great plans : yet speak to me, 
Say one soft word and let me part forgiven/^ 

But Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child. 
Then Arac. " Ida — ^sdeath ! yon blame the man ; 
Yon wrong yourselves — the woman is so hard 205 

Upon the woman. Come, a grace to me ! 
I am your warrior : I and mine have fought 
Your battle : kiss her : take her hand, she weeps : 
'Sdeath ! I would sooner fight thrice o'er than see it/' 

But Ida spoke not, gazing on the ground, 210 

And reddening in the furrows of his chin, 
And moved beyond his custom, Gama said : 
'' Fve heard that there is iron in the blood. 
And I believe it. Not one word ? not one ? 
Whence drew you this steel temper ? not from me, 
Not from your mother, now a saint with saints. 216 
She said you had a heart — I heard her say it — 
^ Our Ida has a heart ' — ^just ere she died — 
^ But see that some one with authority 
Be near her still,' and I — I sought for one — 220^ 

All people said she had authority — 
The Lady Blanche : much profit ! Not one word ; 
No ! tho' your father sues : see how you stand 
Stiff as Lot's wife, and all the good knights maim'd, 
I trust that there is no one hurt to death, 225 

For your wild whim : and was it then for this, 

202. part. Cf . *' parted/^ II. 166 and note. 
206. grace, favor. 

224. Stiff as Lot's wife, who was turned into a piUar of salt in punish- 
ment for disobedience. 



THE PRINCESS 123 

Was it for this we gave our palace up. 
Where we withdrew from summer heats and state, 
And had our wine and chess beneath the planes. 
And many a pleasant hour with her that^s gone, 230 
Ere you were born to vex us ? Is it kind ? 
Speak to her I say : is this not she of whom, 
When first she came, all flushed you said to me 
Now had you got a friend of your own age, 
Now could you share your thought ; now should men 
see 235 

Two women faster welded in one love 
Than pairs of wedlock ; she you walked with, she 
You talked with, whole nights long, up in the tower, 
Of sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth. 
And right ascension. Heaven knows what ; and now 
A word, but one, one little kindly word, 241 

Not one to spare her : out upon you, flint ! 
You love nor her, nor me, nor any ; nay. 
You shame your mother^s judgment too. Not one ? 
You will not ? well — no heart have you, or such 245 
As fancies like the vermin in a nut 
Have fretted all to dust and bitterness/^ 
So said the small king moved beyond his wont. 

But Ida stood nor spoke, drained of her force 
By many a varying influence and so long. 250 

Down thro^ her limbs a drooping languor wept : 
Her head a little bent ; and on her mouth 

239. sine and arc, mathematical terms, spheroid . . . ascension, astro- 
nomical termis. 

245. such, a heart from which her fanciful ideas have taken all nat- 
ural feeling 

250. By many emotions, different in character and prolonged in timQ, 

251 wept, softly and slowly, like the falling of tears. 



n 



124 THE PRINCESS 

A doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded moon 

In a still water : then brake out my sire, 

Lifting his grim head from my wounds. " you, 255 

Woman, w^hom we thought woman even now. 

And were half fooled to let you tend our son. 

Because he might have wished it — but w^e see 

The accomplice of your madness unforgiven. 

And think that you might mix his draught with death, 

When your skies change again : the rougher hand 

Is safer : on to the tents : take up the Prince/^ 262 

He rose, and while each ear was prick'd to attend 
A tempest, thro^ the cloud that dimmed her broke 
A genial warmth and light once more, and shone 265 
Thro^ glittering drops on her sad friend. 

" Come hither. 

Psyche,^^ she cried out, '^ embrace me, come. 
Quick while I melt ; make reconcilement sure 
With one that cannot keep her mind an hour : 

Come to the hollow heart they slander so ! 270 

Kiss and be friends, like children being chid ! 

1 seem no more : I want forgiveness too : 

I should have had to do with none but maids, 
That have no links with men. Ah false but dear, 
Dear traitor, too much loved, why ? — why ? — Yet see. 
Before these kings we embrace you yet once more 276 



260. death. See note on V. 147. 

261. When your skies change again, when your present sympathy has 
given place to anger. 

263. attend, await. 

270. hollow. Cf. 245-7 above. 

272. no more, sc " than a child." 

275. why ?— why ? She was beginning to ask, '' Why need our friend- 
ship have been broken ? " but recognizes the futility of such idle ques- 
tioning. 



THE PRINCESS 135 

With all forgiveness^ all oblivion^ 
And trust;, not love^ you less. 

And now, sire, 
Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him. 
Like mine own brother. For my debt to him, 280 
This nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it ; 
Taunt me no more : yourself and yours shall have 
Free adit ; we will scatter all our maids 
Till happier times each to her proper hearth : 
What use to keep them here — now ? grant my prayer. 
Help, father, brother, help ; speak to the king : 286 
Thaw this male nature to some touch of that 
Which kills me with myself, and drags me down 
From my fixt height to mob me up with all 
The soft and milky rabble of womankind, 290 

Poor weakling ev^n as they are.^^ 

Passionate tears 
Follow^ : the king replied not : Cyril said : 
^^Your brother. Lady, — Florian, — ask for him 
Of your great head — for he is wounded too — 
That you may tend upon him with the Prince.^^ 295 
^^ Ay so,^^ said Ida with a bitter smile, 
" Our laws are broken : let him enter too.^^ 
Then Violet, she that sang the mournful song. 
And had a cousin tumbled on the plain. 
Petition^ too for him. '' Ay so,'^ she said, 300 

277. oblivion, for^etfulness 

281. This nightmare weight of gratitude. Cf. 110 above. 
283. adit, entrance, access 
284 proper, in the Latin sense of "own." 

287-8. that . . . myself, the womanly nature, which is almost crushing 
her with the force of its return. 
289. mob me up, merge me with the mob of. 
292. Cyril said, to Psvche. 

298. the mournful sorig. Cf. IV. 21-40. 

299. tumbled, thrown from his horse. 



126 THE PRINCESS 

'' I stagger in the stream : I cannot keep 

My heart an eddy from the brawling hour : 

We break our laws with ease, but let it be/' 

" Ay so ? '^ said Blanche : " Amazed am I to hear 

Your Highness : but your Highness breaks with ease 

The law your Highness did not make : 'twas I. 306 

I had been wedded wife, I knew mankind, 

And blocked them out ; but these men came to woo 

Your Highness — verily I think to win/' 

So she, and turn'd askance a wintry eye : 310 

But Ida with a voice, that like a bell 
Toll'd by an earthquake in a trembling tower, 
Eang ruin, answer'd full of grief and scorn. 

^^ Fling our doors wide ! all, all, not one, but all, 
Not only he, but by my mother's soul, 315 

Whatever man lies wounded, friend or foe. 
Shall enter, if he will. Let our girls flit, 
Till the storm die ! but had you stood by us. 
The roar that breaks the Pharos from his base 
Had left us rock. She fain would sting us too, 320 
But shall not. Pass, and mingle with your likes. 
We brook no further insult but are gone." 

She turn'd ; the very nape of her white neck 
Was rosed with indignation : but the Prince 
Her brother came ; the king her father charm'd 325 

302. eddy, a little whirlpool in the stream which remains in the same 
place. The heart of the Princess cannot withstand the force of her 
woman's nature, long pent up. 

310. wintry, hard and cold. 

319. the Pharos, the famous lighthouse huilt by Ptolemy Philadelphus 
(B.C. 250) on the island of Pharos, near Alexandria. 



I 



THE PRINCESS 127 

Her wounded soul with words : nor did mine own 
Eefuse her proffer^ lastly gave his hand. 

Then ns they lifted np^ dead weights^ and bare 
Straight to the doors : to them the doors gave way 
Groaning, and in the Vestal entry shrieked 330 

The virgin marble under iron heels : 
And on they moved and gained the hall, and there 
Bested : but great the crush was, and each base, 
To left and right, of those tall columns drowned 
In silken fluctuation and the swarm 335 

Of female whisperers : at the f urtiier end 
Was Ida by the throne, the two great cats 
Close by her, like supporters on a shield, 
Bow-backed with fear : but in the center stood 
The common men with rolling eyes ; amazed 340 

They glared upon the women, and aghast 
The women stared at these, all silent, save 
When armor clashed or jingled, w^hile the day. 
Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot 
A flying splendor out of brass and steel, 345 

That o'er the statues leapt from head to head, 
Now flred an angry Pallas on the helm, 
Now set a wrathful Dian's moon on flame. 
And now and then an echo started up. 
And shuddering fled from room to room, and died 350 
Of fright in far apartments. 



330. Vestal, untrodden by man. See note on II. 204. 

337. cats, the tame leopards. Cf. II. 20; III. 170. 

338. supporters, in heraldry, the name given to the two figures, usu- 
ally animals, that stand on either side of the coat of arms. 

347. Pallas, the goddess of Wisdom. 

348. Dian, Diana, the Latin goddess whose symbol was the moon. 



128 THE PRINCESS 

Then the voice 
Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance : 
And me they bore up the broad stairs^, and thro' 
The long-laid galleries past a hundred doors 
To one deep chamber shut from sound, and due 355 
To languid limbs and sickness ; left me in it ; 
And others otherwhere they laid ; and all 
That afternoon a sound arose of hoof 
And chariot, many a maiden passing home 
Till happier times ; but some were left of those 360 
Held sagest, and the great lords out and in, 
From those two hosts that lay beside the walls. 
Walked at their will, and everything was changed. 

353. ordinance, commands. 
355. due. Cf. lY. 123. 



I 



THE PRINCESS 129 



VII 

Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea; * 

The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape, 
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape; 

But too fond, when have I answer'd thee ? f 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more : what answer should I give ? 
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye : 
Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die ! 

Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live; 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more : thy fate and mine are seal'd : :j: 
I strove against the stream and all in vain : 
Let the great river take me to the main: 

No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield ; 
Ask me no more. 

So was their sanctuary violated. 

So their fair college turned to hospital ; 

At first with all confusion : by and by 

Sweet order lived again with other laws : 

A kindlier influence reigned ; and everywhere 5 

Low voices with the ministering hand 

Hung round the sick : the maidens came, they talked, 

They sang, they read : till she not fair began 

To gather light, and she that was, became 

Her former beauty treble ; and to and fro 10 

See note on first song. This song anticipates the Princess's self-sur- 
render to the all-powerful influence of love. 

* the moon may draw^the sea. The reference is to the phenomenon of 
the tides, which are largely controlled by the moon 

f Sympathy may exist between various forms of Nature, but when 
have I eriven you any reason to expect that it may exist between us ? 

$ sealed, sc " by Fate '' ; irrevocable- 



130 THE PRINCESS 

With books^ with flowers, with Angel offices. 
Like creatures native unto gracious act, 
And in their own clear element, they moved. 

But sadness on the soul of Ida fell. 
And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. 15"* 
Old studies fail'd ; seldom she spoke : but oft 
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours 
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men 
Darkening her female field : void was her use. 
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze 30 

O^er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night. 
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore. 
And suck the blinding splendor from the sand. 
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn 25 

Expunge the w^orld : so fared she gazing there ; 
So blacken'd all her world in secret, blank 
And waste it seem'd and vain ; till down she came. 
And found fair peace once more among the sick. 

And twilight dawn'd ; and morn by morn the lark 
Shot up and shrilPd in flickering gyres, but I 3L 

Lay silent in the muffled cage of life : 
And twilight gloom'd ; and broader-grown the bowers 
Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven, 
Star after star, arose and fell ; but I, 35 

11. Angel offices, gracious ministrations. 

17. Clomb, the old past tense of " climb." 

18. leaguer, camp 

19 void was her use, she no longer busied herself in her usual duties. 

23. verge, horizon 

25 tarn, a small lake 

26. Expunge, blot out of sight. 

31. gyres, circles. 



THE PRINCESS 131 

Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay 
Quite sunder'd from the moving Universe, 
IsTor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand 
That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep. 

But Psyche tended Florian : with her oft 40 

Melissa came ; for Blanche had gone, but left 
Her child among us, willing she should keep 
Court-favor : here and there the small bright head, 
A light of healing, glanced about the couch. 
Or thro^ the parted silks the tender face 45 

Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded man 
With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves 
To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw 
The sting from pain ; nor seemM it strange that soon 
He rose up whole, and those fair charities 50 

Joined at her side ; nor stranger seemM that hearts 
So gentle, so employed, should close in love. 
Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake 
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down, 
And slip at once all-fragrant into one. 55 

Less prosperously the second suit obtain^ 
At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche had sworn 
That after that dark night among the fields 
She needs must wed him for her own good name ; 
Not tho' he built upon the babe restored ; 60 

Nor tho^ she liked him, yielded she, but fear'd 



45 silks, the silken curtains of the beds. 

50-1. fair charities . . . side ; Florian joined Melissa in her kindly min- 
istrations 
56. obtain'd. prevailed. 
60. Cf. V. 101-2. 



132 THE PRINCESS 

To incense the Head once more : till on a day 

When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind 

Seen bnt of Psyche : on her foot she hung 

A moment, and she heard, at which her face 65 

A little flushed, and she passed on ; but each 

Assumed from thence a half -consent involved 

In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace. 

Nor only these : Love in the sacred halls 
Held carnival at will, and flying struck 70 

With showers of random sweet on maid and man. 
Nor did her father cease to press my claim, 
ITor did mine own now reconciled ; nor yet 
Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole ; 
Nor Arac, satiate with his victory. 75 

But I lay still, and with me oft she sat : 
Then came a change ; for sometimes I would catch 
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard. 
And fling it like a viper off, and shriek 
'' You are not Ida ; ^^ clasp it once again^ 80 

And call her Ida, tho' I knew her not. 
And call her sweet, as if in irony. 
And call her hard and cold which seem'd a truth : 
And still she feared that I should lose my mind. 
And often she believed that I should die : 85 

Till out of long frustration of her care. 
And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons. 
And watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks 

71. showers of random sweet, a continuance of the metaphor of a car- 
nival, during which it is the custom to pelt passers-by with handfuls 
of sweetmeats 

86. frustration of her care, the failure of her nursing to obtain a cure. 

88. the dead, sc. " of night." 



THE PRINCESS , 133 

ThrobVd thunder thro^ the palace floors, or calFd 

On flying Time from all their silver tongues — 90 

And out of memories of her kindlier days. 

And sidelong glances at my father^s grief, 

And at the happy lovers heart in heart — 

And out of hauntings of my spoken love, 

And lonely listenings to my muttered dream, 95 

And often feeling of the helpless hands, 

And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek — 

From all a closer interest flourished up, 

Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these. 

Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears 100 

By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first 

And feeble, all unconscious of itself. 

But such as gathered color day by day. 

Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death 
For weakness : it was evening : silent light 105 

Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought 
Two grand designs ; for on one side arose 
The women up in wild revolt, and storm'd 
At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they crammM 
The forum, and half-crushM among the rest 110 

A dwarf-like Cato cowerM. On the other side 
Hortensia spoke against the tax ; behind, 

91. her kindlier days. Cf. III. 204. 

96. often, frequent. 

109. Oppian law, passed during the Second Punic War (215 B.C.) to 
restrain the Roman women from their extravagance in dress ; twenty 
years later, after the war was over, the women rose in the Forum and 
compelled its repeal. 

Titanic, gigantic ; the Titans were a mythological race of giants. 

111. Cato, the Roman consul (195 B.C.) who protested against the 
repeal of the Oppian law. 

112. Hortensia, a Roman woman who prevented the passing of a law 
taxing wealthy Roman matrons for the support of the army of the 
Second Triumvirate (44 B.C.). 



134 THE PRINCESS 

A train of dames : by axe and eagle sat^ 
With all their foreheads drawn in Koman scowls, 
And half the wolf s-milk curdled in their veins^ 115 
The fierce triumvirs : and before them paused 
Hortensia pleading : angry was her face. 

I saw the forms : I knew not where I was : 
They did but look like hollow shows ; nor more 
Sweet Ida : palm to palm she sat : the dew 120 

Dwelt in her eyes^ and softer all her shape 
And rounder seemM : I moved : I siglr d : a touch 
Came round my wrist^, and tears upon my hand : 
Then all for languor and self-pity ran 
Mine down my face^ and with what life I had, 125 

And like a flower that cannot all unfold, 
So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun, 
Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her 
Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisperingly : 

^^ If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream, 130 
I would but ask you to fulfill yourself : 
But if you be that Ida whom I knew, 
I ask you nothing : only, if a dream, 
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. 
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.^^ 135 

I could no more, but lay like one in trance. 
That hears his burial talk'd of by his friends. 



113. axe and eagle, the Roman symbols of civil and military author- 
ity, respectively 

115. wolfs-miik, Romnlus and Remus, the legendary founders of 
Rome, were said to have been suckled by a wolf. 

116. triumvirs, Anthony, Octavius, and Lepidus. 



THE PRINCESS 135 

And cannot speak^ nor move^ nor make one sign, 

But lies and dreads his doom. She turned ; she 

paused ; 
She stooped ; and out of languor leapt a cry ; 140 

Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; 
And I believed that in the living world 
My spirit closed with Ida^s at the lips ; 
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose 
Glowing all over noble shame ; and all 145 

Her falser self slipt from her like a robe. 
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood 
Than in her mold that other, when she came 
From barren deeps to conquer all with love ; 
And down the streaming crystal dropt ; and she 150 
Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides, 
IsTaked, a double light in air and wave, 
To meet her Graces, where they decl<:'d her out 
For worship without end ; nor end of mine. 
Stateliest, for thee ! but mute she glided forth, 155 
Nor glanced behind her, and I sank and slept, 
Fiird thro' and thro' with Love, a happy sleep. 

Deep in the night I woke : she, near me, held 
A volume of the Poets of her land : 
There to herself, all in low tones, she read. 160 

" Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white ; 
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk ; 
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font : 
The firefly wakens : waken thou with me. 

148. that other, Venus, the f^oddess of Love, who, in Latin mythology, 
was said to have risen from tlie sea, and to have been clothed by the 
Graces with all adornments of beauty. 

154. mine, sc. "worship." 

155. thee, the Princess. 



136 THE PRINCESS 

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, 165 
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. 

Now lies the Earth all Danag to the stars, 
And all thy heart lies open unto me. 

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves 
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. 170 

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up. 
And slips into the bosom of the lake : 
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip 
Into my bosom and be lost in me." 

I heard her turn the page ; she found a small 175 

Sweet Idyl^ and once more^, as low^ she read : 

** Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang). 
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills ? 
But cease to move so near the heavens, and cease 180 

To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine. 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire ; 
And come, for Love is of the valley, come. 
For Love is of the valley, come thou down 
And find him ; by the happy threshold, he, 185 

Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, 
Or red with spirted purple of the vats. 
Or fox-like in the vine; nor cares to walk 
With Death and Morning on the silver horns. 
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, 190 

Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, 
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls 
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors : 
But follow ; let the torrent dance thee down 

167. Danae, a princess of Argos, who was confined in a brazen tower 
for safety, to which Zeus gained aamittance, coming in the form of a 
rain of gold. 

177-207. An adaptation of the Eleventh Idyl of Theocritus, the Greek 
poet. 

186 maize, corn. 

189. horns, the peaks of the mountain. 

191-193. The glacier, slanting down in ridgy (huddling) masses, at 
the foot of which the mountain stream begins. 



THE PRINCESS 137 

To find him in the valley ; let the wild 195 

Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 

The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 

Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, 

That like a broken purpose waste in air : 

So waste not thou, but come ; for all the vales 200 

Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth 

Arise to thee ; the children call, and I 

Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, 

Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; 

Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, 205 

The moan of doves in immemorial elms. 

And murmuring of innumerable bees." 

So she low-toned ; while with shut eyes I lay 
Listening ; then looked. Pale was the perfect face ; 
The bosom with long sighs labored ; and meek 210 

Seemed the full lips^ and mild the luminous eyes^ 
And the voice trembled and the hand. She said 
Brokenly^ that she knew it^ she had fail'd 
In sweet humility ; had faiFd in all ; 
That all her labor was but as a block 215 

Left in the quarry ; but she still were loth^ 
She still were loth to yield herself to one 
That wholly scornM to help their equal rights 
Against the sons of men^ and barbarous laws. 
She prayM me not to judge their cause from her 220 
That wronged it, sought far less for truth than power 
In knowledge : something wild within her breast^ 
A greater than all knowledge, beat her down. 
And she had nursed me there from week to week : 

198. water-smoke, the spray and foam of the waterfalls. 
201. azure pillars, the blue smoke rising from the hearth. 
205-7 Notice the onomatopceia. 

215-16 block left in the quarry, she had not been able to complete 
the sculpture of her design. 



138 THE PRINCESS 

Mucli had she learnt in little time. In part 225 

It was ill counsel had misled the girl 

To vex true hearts : yet was she but a girl — 

" Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce ! 

When comes another such ? never, I think, 

Till the Sun drop, dead, from tlie signs.'^ 

Her voice 
Choked, and lier forehead sank upon lier hands, 231 
And lier great heart thro' all the faultful Past 
Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break ; 
Till notice of a change in the dark world 
Was lispt about the acacias, and a bird, 235 

That early woke to feed her little ones, 
Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light : 
She moved, and at her feet the volume fell. 

^^ Blame not thyself too much,^^ I said, '^ nor blame 
Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws ; 249 
These were the rough ways of the world till now. 
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know 
The woman's cause is man's : they rise or sink 
Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free : 
For she that out of Lethe scales with man 245 - 

The shining steps of Nature, shares with man 
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, 
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands — 

2;^0. the signs, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, of the old astronomy. 
ThrouKh these lies the path which the sun appears to follow in the 
heavens. 

234. Change, the breaking of day 

3ei5 acacias, a kind of flowering shrub. 

245. out of Lethe, from the beginning of life. Lethe (oblivion) was 
the name of a river of Hades, whose waters gave forgetfulness of past 
existence 

245-6 scales . . . the steps of Nature, keeps pace in development 
with man. 



THE PEIXCESS 139 

K she be small, slight-natured, miserable. 

How shall men grow ? but work no more alone ! 250 

Our place is much : as far as in us liei= 

We two will serve them both in aiding her — 

Will clear away the parasitic forms 

That seem to keep her up but drag her down — 

Will leave her space to burgeon out of all 255 

Within her — let her make herself her own 

To give or keep, to live and learn and be 

All that not harms distinctive womanhood. 

For woman is not undevelopt man. 

But diverse : could we make her as a man, 260 

Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this, 

Xot like to like, but like in difference. 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow. 

The man be more of woman, she of man ; 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 265 

Xor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world : 

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 

Till at the last she set herself to man. 

Like perfect music unto noble words ; 270 

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time. 

Sit side by side, full-summ"d in all their powers. 

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 

SI. Our, of men. 

2SS. parasitic forms, coiiTeJitions that tend to degrade voman. 

2%. burgeon, to bkMHMn OQt. 

aw. diverse, cf V. IS^X 

a©5. The practical side of man's natore. 

27^. full-summed, fnUr developed 

271-9. So. in the dista^ * ^-^t.^ ^,o^ jy^^ woman each p rope rly de- 
veloped^ shall lav the - higher and more perfiect de- 

Telopment, each recog:. dual sphere of each, but know. 

ing that each attains to tue ^o-e^xes^ asefnlnees only when Joined with 
the other. Then riiaU eome again the Golden A«bl CLlV.m. 



140 THE PRINCESS 

Self -reverent each and reverencing each. 

Distinct in individuaUties, 275 

But like each other ev^n as those who love. 

Then conies the statelier Eden back to men : 

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm : 

Then springs the crowning race of humankind. 

May these things be ! '' 

Sighing she spoke : ^^ I fear 280 
They will not.'' 

^^ Dear, but let us type them now 
In our own lives, and this proud watchword rest 
Of equal ; seeing either sex alone 
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies 
Nor equal, nor unequal : each fulfills 285 

Defect in each, and always thought in thought, 
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, 
The single pure and perfect animal. 
The two-ceird heart beating, with one full stroke, 
Life.'' 

And again sighing she spoke : ^' A dream 290 
That once was mine ! what woman taught you this ? '^ 

^^ Alone," I said, ^^ from earlier than I know, 
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, 
I loved the woman : he, that doth not, lives 
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self, 295 

Or pines in sad experience worse than death. 
Or keeps his wing'd affections dipt with crime : 
Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her, one 
Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 

381. type, typify. 

282. rest, dependent on " let '' above. 

288. animal, being. 



THE PRINCESS 141 

Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 300 

No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 

In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 

Interpreter between the Gods and men. 

Who looked all native to her place, and yet 

On tiptoe seemM to touch upon a sphere 305 

Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 

Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved, 

And girdled her with music. Happy he 

With such a mother ! faith in womankind 

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 310 

Comes easy to him, and tho^ he trip and fall 

He shall not blind his soul with clay/^ 

^'But I/^ 
Said Ida, tremulously, '^ so all unlike — 
It seems you love to cheat yourself with words : 
This mother is your model. I have heard 315 

Of your strange doubts : they well might be : I seem 
A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince ; 
You cannot love me.^^ 

'' Nay but thee,'' I said 
^^ From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes. 
Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw 320 

Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods 
That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and forced 
Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood : now. 



302. breathing Paradise. Cf. III. 215, V. 154. 

304. native to. Cf 12, above. 

298-312. It is supposed that Tennyson aUudes to his own mother. 

308. The reference is to the poetical belief in the "Music of the 
Spheres." 

319. thy pictured eyes, cf. I. 37-39 

321. the crust of iron moods, the unnatural severity of character 
and life which the Princess had assumed. 



142 THE PRINCESS 

Giv^n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee, 

Indeed I love : the new day comes, the light 325 

Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults 

Lived over : lift thine eyes ; my doubts are dead. 

My haunting sense of hollow shows : the change, 

This truthful change in thee has kilFd it. Dear, 

Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, 330 

Like yonder morning on the blind half -world ; 

Approach and fear not ; breathe upon my brows ; 

In that fine air I tremble, all the past 

Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this 

Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come 335 

Eeels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels 

Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, 

I waste my heart in signs : let be. My bride. 

My wife, my life. we will walk this world, 

Yoked in all exercise of noble end, 340 

And so thro' those dark gates across the wild 

That no man knows. Indeed I love thee : come, 

Yield thyself up : my hopes and thine are one : 

Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself ; 

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.'' 345 

331. blind half-world, that hemisphere yet in the darkness of night. 

333. In that fine air I tremble, as physicaUy in rarefied air. 

334. mist-like, as does mist. 

335 morn to more, only the beginning of what is to come. 

336-7. His future seems so blissful that he cannot think calmly of it. 

338. signs, metaphors. 

340. end, aim. 



THE PRINCESS 143 



CONCLUSION. 

So closed our tale^ of which I give you all 

The random scheme as wildly as it rose : 

The words are mostly mine ; for when we ceased 

There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 

'' I wish she had not yielded ! '^ then to me, 5 

" What, if you drest it up poetically ! " 

So pray'd the men, the women : I gave assent : 

Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven 

Together in one sheaf ? W^hat style could suit ? 

The men required that I should give throughout 10 

The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque. 

With which we banter'd little Lilia first : 

The women — and perhaps they felt their power. 

For something in the ballads which they sang. 

Or in their silent influence as they sat, 15 

Had ever seemM to wrestle with burlesque. 

And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close — 

They hated banter, wish'd for something real, 

A gallant fight, a noble princess — why 

Not make her true-heroic, true-sublime ? 20 

O** all, they said, as earnest as the close ? 

Wiiich yet with such a framework scarce could be. 

Then rose a little feud betwixt the two. 

Betwixt the mockers and the realists : 

And I, betwixt them both, to please them both, 25 

And yet to give the story as it rose, 

11. the sort, cf Prologue 217-19. 



144 THE PRINCESS 

I moved as in a strange diagonal. 

And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. 

But Lilia pleased me^, for she took no part 
In our dispute : the sequel of the tale 30 

Had touched her ; and she sat, she pluck'd the grass. 
She flung it from her, thinking : last, she fixt 
A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, 
^' You — tell us what we are ^' who might have told, 
For she was crammed with theories out of books, 35 
But that there rose a shout : the gates were closed 
At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, 
To take their leave, about the garden rails. 

So I and some went out to these : we climb'd 
The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw 40 

The happy valleys, half in light, and half 
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace ; 
Gray halls alone among their massive groves ; 
Trim hamlets ; here and there a rustic tower 
Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat ; 45 
The shimmering glimpses of a stream ; the seas ; 
A red sail, or a white ; and far beyond. 
Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. 

27. a strange diagonal. Explanatory of the inconsistency of the tone 
throughout. A diagonal is a mechanical term meaning the direction 
of motion of the resultant of two forces. Dr. Van Dyke in his Poetry 
of Tennyson, p 115, says : "This diagonal movement is the essential 
fault of the poem ; for it is not really a diagonal, but a zigzag, and 
we can never tell how to trim our sails to catch the force of the 
breeze. At one moment the poet seems to be making fun of the 
woman's college, and the next moment he is very much in earnest. 
As a serious poem Tlie Princess is too amusing ; as an amusing poem 
it is too serious.*" 

33 showery, tearful. 

42. far-shadowing, shadowed from a distance. 

48. the skirts of France, the borders, the extreme boundaries. Cf. 
" the skirts of Time," VII. 270. 



THE PRINCESS 145 

'^ Look there, a garden ! ^^ said my college friend^ 
The Tory member's elder son, '' and there ! 50 

God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, 
And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, 
A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled — 
Some sense of duty, something of a faith. 
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 55 
Some patient force to change them when we will, 
Some civic manhood firm against the crowd — 
But yonder, whiff ! there comes a sudden heat. 
The gravest citizen seems to lose his head. 
The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, 60 

The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 
A kingdom topples over with a shriek 
Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 
In mock heroics stranger than our own ; 
Ee volts, republics, revolutions, most 65 

No graver than a schoolboys' barring out ; 
Too comic for the solemn things they are. 
Too solemn for the comic touches in them. 
Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream 
As some of theirs — God bless the narrow seas ! 70 

I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad/' 



50. Tory, the name given to the Conservative Party in English poli- 
tics. 

member, sc. " of Parliament.'' 

57. the crowd, the masses. Cf. In Memoriarn, CXXVIII. 14 : 

'* To fool the crowd with glorious lies.'' 

58. sudden heat, revolution. 

66 no graver, of no more importance. 

barring out, barring the door against the entrance of the school- 
master. 
67. too comic, too ridiculous in their beginnings. 

70. the narrow seas, a name often given to the Straits of Dover 
which separate England from France. Cf . Merchant of Venice, II. viii. 
38-9: 

** The narrow seas that part 
The French and English." 



146 THE PRINCESS 

" Have patience/^ I replied^ " ourselves are full 
Of social wrong ; and maybe wildest dreams 
Are but the needful preludes of the truth : 
For me^ the genial day, the happy crowd, 75 

The sport half-science, fill me with a faith. 
This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its limbs : there is a hand that guides.'^ 

In such discourse we gain'd the garden rails, 80 

And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood, 
Before a tower of crimson holly-oaks, 
Among six boys, head under head, and look'd 
No little lily-handed Baronet he, 

A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman, 85 

A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, 
A raiser of huge melons and of pine, 
A patron of some thirty charities, 
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none ; 90 

Fair-haired and redder than a windy morn ; 
Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those 
That stood the nearest — now address'd to speech — 
Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed 
Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year 95 

To follow : a shout rose again, and made 
The long line of the approaching rookery swerve 



78. go-cart, a framework on wheels for supporting children while 
learning to walk 

87. pine, pineapples. 

90. quarter-session, a court for the trying of minor offenses, held 
four times a year. 

94. closed, included. Cf. Locksley Hall, 14: 
" When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed." 

97. rookery, the rooks, an English bird very like the American crow. 



THE PRINCESS 147 

From the elms^ and shook the branches of the deer 

Prom slope to slope thro^ distant ferns, and rang 

Beyond the bourn of sunset ; 0, a shout 100 

More joyful than the city-roar that hails 

Premier or king ! Why should not these great Sirs 

Give up their parks some dozen times a year 

To let the people breathe ? So thrice they cried, 

I likewise, and in groups they stream^ away. 105 

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on. 
So much the gathering darkness charmed : we sat 
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie. 
Perchance upon the future man : the walls 
Blackened about us, bats wheeFd, and owls whoop'd. 
And gradually the powers of the night. 111 

That range above the region of the wind. 
Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up 
Thro^ all the silent spaces of the worlds, 
Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens. 115 

Last little Lilia, rising quietly, 
Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ealph 
From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went. 

98 branches, antlers. Cf IV. 187. 
100. bourn, limit. Cf. Hamlet, III. i. 

*' The undiscovered country from whose bourn 
No traveler returns.'' 
112 the region of the wind, the atmosphere of the earth. 
113. broke them up. divided the darkness. 
118. rich silks. Cf. Prologue, 100-3. 



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FRENCH PLAYS FOR GIRLS 

BY VARIOUS AUTHORS 

Edited by Prof. M. Emile Roche 

1. Marguerite ; ou, La robe perdue. Drame moral 
en un acte, mel^ de couplets. 25 cents. 

2. Les Ricochets. Com^die en un acte, imit^e de 
Picard avec couplets. 25 cents. 

3. Les Demoiselles d'Honneur; ou, Le lutin du 
soir. Vaudeville en un acte. 25 cents. 

4. Les Demoiselles de Saint Cyr. Petit drame 
moral en un acte. 25 cents. 

5. Un Reve. Petit drame avec prologue et Epilogue, 
25 cents. 

6. Une Place a la Cour. Comedie en un acte avec 
couplets. 25 cents. 



Mavnard, Merrill, & Co., Publishers 



